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Oppression In The Hunger Games, By Suzanne Collins

1008 Words5 Pages

The Hunger Games circles around Katniss Everdeen as she struggles to survive starvation, while simultaneously being hunted by other children, in a barbaric game held by the government. Survival is just one of the many themes that takes place throughout Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, a 2008 dystopian fiction novel. The Hunger Games does an amazing job at painting a clear picture of the oppression, hunger, and barbarism that is riddled throughout this book, through world building, character development and internal dialog from the main character. One of the most obvious themes that take place in the book is hunger; it's even in the title and it's even more apparent on the pages.

Hunger is one of the main forms of oppression that the capitol …show more content…

74 years prior, District 13 had rebelled towards the capitol eventually leading to its demise, and the start of the hunger games which served as a reminder to the other 12 districts of who's really in control. The remaining districts are there to essentially serve the Capitol, each having their own primary industry, like textiles, fishing, forestry, agriculture, and mining, which is district 12’s industry. The districts are there to provide back breaking work for the capitol and in return starve, and have their children sent to their death each and every year. On top of that the capitol feeds off of their severe malnourishment by creating a system, “Say you are poor and starving as we were, you can opt to add your name in more times in exchange for tesserae” pg.43. Adding your name more times to the bowl of potential tributes increases your chances of being picked, but many families will do this because of the upside, which is an added supply of food. Although it's not much, many families are desperate for anything and will even put their children in harm's way to get it. It's easy to look at these families from a place of disdain, but the real enemy is the people in charge who not only allow for such a practice, but encourage it. They are the real barbaric

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The Book and Movie, The Hunger Games, is an allusion to The story of Theseus and the Minotaur from Greek Mythology. The story goes that Minos, the king of Crete, once sent his only son on a visit to Athens, and he was sent by the Athenian king to fight a bull. When the boy died from the fight, the angry Minos captured Athens and declared that he would destroy it unless they completed his bizarre demand: once every nine years, the Athenians had to send a tribute of seven maidens and seven youths, who would then be forced to confront the Minotaur, who would devour them. This directly parallels the story of The Hunger Games. This rewritten version of an old Greek legend shows a theme of how history can repeat itself.

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The twelve districts in theory should view the Hunger Games as the necessary tool that keeps Panem from uprising and self-destruction, however, the reception of the Games in the really poor districts clearly shows that the Capitol cannot reform them to think so. Statistically, the poor districts are always the most likely to lose one year’s competition because they lack resources to train tributes and their children are starving. Therefore, the response to the Hunger Games in the poor districts who are on the brink of starvation is the most dramatic. Citizens of districts such as 11 and 12 can only view the Games as injustice because once a child is chosen at the Reaping he or she is evidently doomed to die. There are rare exceptions as the

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The Hunger Games trilogy revolves around universal dystopian themes such as :oppression, rebellion, class tension as well as appearance vs. reality ," Collins creates the world that on one hand seems quite improbable and extreme, but on the other, vividly reflects some specific issues in a real world, like social inequalities, ignorance and passivity of the people" (Macanić 7). Oppression is perhaps the most common and prevalent dystopian theme as it serves as a warning against a highly probable dark future through shedding light on the dark side of contemporary trends such as advanced technology and reality TV-shows .The Capitol 's oppression operates on two levels; districts and individuals. The districts in general and districts 11 and 12 in particular have suffered great injustices at the ruthless hands of the Capitol ; however, there is no greater injustice than The Hunger Games themselves not only are the people of Panem forced to surrender their children as tributes for the Capitol 's citizens viewing pleasure for a crime they had no hand in committing ,but they are also forced to watch helplessly as their children are killed in the most brutal of manners .In Catching Fire (2009) , President Snow decrees that " the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors" in order to get rid of Katniss once and for all ,and to further assert the Capitol 's dominance and quell any thoughts of rebellion(172).

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