Similarities Between The Hunger Games And Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 may seem very different than Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy, but the dystopian governments in each story bear many similarities, especially their control over the media. In Fahrenheit 451 the citizens live in a society where books are illegal and there is an entire profession devoted to their destruction. While in The Hunger Games trilogy the government forces its citizens to watch their children be slaughtered to death while the lavish people of the Capitol laugh.
Fahrenheit 451 and The Hunger Games trilogy are widely popular dystopian stories; they share many similarities, but their most striking one is the governmental control of the media consumed by citizens. In Fahrenheit 451 the punishment

In this story every American fireman had been taught that their sole purpose has always been to destroy books. Books, as well as most intellectual media, have been banned for so long that most people have forgotten the time when they were an integral part of society. Extreme censorship is completely normal. In The Hunger Games trilogy the government’s primary goal is to keep the country it controls in check. To do this they force the slaughter of children as well as silence any revolutionary. While the first is the prime plot point of the series, the second is the underlying cause for the majority of the conflict. During the first book of the trilogy, The Hunger Games, the protagonist, Katniss, accidentally starts a riot in the home of one of her slain competitors. Obviously the riot was met with brutality and a lack of reporting on the government’s part. In Catching Fire, the second book, when Katniss speaks about the child who started the riot the crowd she was speaking to was bludgeoned and beaten by the police. In that book all of her actions and decisions are heavily influenced by how the government may interpret them. At the end of the book, in order to finally attempt to silence her, the government bombed the district where she

However, this does not mean that there is a limit to how violent or corrupt the information they receive is. In Fahrenheit 451 the protagonist’s wife considers television characters to be a part of her family. It turns out that Jesus has become a character used more for entertainment than a religious figure. “Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs.” Later in the book the fire chief explains to the protagonist that books were made illegal because many minority groups were offended by their contents, but the debasement of a major religious figure is not a noticeable phenomenon to the populous. The Hunger Games trilogy is about an annual event where children ages twelve through eighteen are forced to kill each other while the havoc that ensues is nationally broadcasted. In the first book of the trilogy the protagonist has a small funeral for a younger tribute that was slaughtered; her act of kindness inspires the girl’s home district to riot. The rioters are beaten and denied any media coverage while the games still continue. In both stories it is obvious that