Sated: Looking Back on the Hunger Games

CE Jenkins

****WARNING: Contains spoilers for the Hunger Games series. *****

As it turns out, taking a nap from 7-9pm is a terrible idea. I came to this realization at around 4:30am, after staring at the ceiling above my bed for five hours and willing myself into unconsciousness. That having failed, I settled for the next best thing other than slowing my brain’s inevitable slide into a grayish stew: reading. And that is the story on how I finished the Hunger Games trilogy.

I have to say, I profess myself disappointed. If you were to graph my enjoyment of the three books, it would look something like a skier going over a cliff. Still, in the grand scheme of things I found the series engaging and entertaining.

What I liked most about the Hunger Games was the concept; yes, yes, I know it stole from Battle Royale. If you want to go tearing down everything that steals from its predecessors, you should wear comfortable shoes and pack enough spam to last you the lifetime such a task would take. So all other things not considered, the world of Panem was quite an interesting one; what I liked most about it was how focused on spectacle it was. Throughout the whole series, the main focus is on appearances for television. Whether it’s prepping for the Hunger Games, going on the Victor’s Tour or making propos as the Mockingjay, everything is centered around what people will be seeing on their screens at home. This made for a pretty unique perspective and had some nifty influences on the plot.

Another aspect I enjoyed was how the story took a whole bunch of different genres and tossed them into a blender. The whole series really downplays the sci fi and fantasy aspects to it, focusing more on the “realistic” parts and tossing in everything else as seasoning. The scenes in District 12 had a very gritty, realistic feel to them, focusing mainly on poverty and starvation with the constant threat of the Capitol hanging over it. In the Games themselves the story took on a more action/adventure tone on top of that, spiced up by the sci-fi elements the Game Masters brought to it. The genetically-engineered animals were a great example; their concept is fairly grounded, while providing plenty of wiggle room towards sci fi or horror. My favorite parts of the books were the ones that described the unique fixtures of the world. In short, Collins was at her best when she was making a bunch of shit up.

Then you have the love triangle: will Katniss succumb to Peeta’s loyal, sentimental charm? Or will her longstanding friendship with the fiery Gale win out? Which could it be?! Like many others, I didn’t really care that much. The problem I had was that Katniss just didn’t ever have any chemistry with either of them; not just that, but half the time she doesn’t even like them. There’s hardly ever any attraction, and all of the romance scenes are treated with very unromantic writing. It’s hard to get into all that lovin’ action when the narrator herself isn’t into it either. Even at the end of Mockingjay, Katniss’s ultimate choice in mate is given about a paragraph. The entire book may not have been hinging on her ultimate decision—far from it—but Peeta/Katniss/Gale did make up a significant subplot, and the ending felt rushed and anticlimactic. And even then, when Katniss confesses her love to Peeta, we get the feeling that it’s almost out of convenience. Amorous subplots don’t have to be sentimental, and writing it that way would have felt untrue to the book; but they do have to be convincing, and in the end the characters fail to persuade. Just one more major plot point that could be easily solved by a threesome.

But what probably bothered me most about all three books was what the author decided to pay attention to. There are so many interesting things going on in the world—war, death, famine, etc—but gods forbid you get to actually see any of it. I felt like I was reading the book wearing blinders. In book one I really wanted to hear what was going on with the other tributes, but instead was stuck in a tree with Katniss for most of the time. It wasn’t boring, exactly; more like dissatisfying, to know that all this cool stuff was happening and I wasn’t going to experience it. Catching Fire was better, because they introduce the other tributes and let you get to know them more. But at the same time it bothered me that they didn’t ever find out what many of the other sections on the clock did. Fascinating possibilities were dangled tantalizing in front of my eyes, then whisked away without ever being referenced again. Then finally in Mockingjay we spend almost the entire war in various hospitals. I mean, why would we want to see the District’s bloody fight for freedom when we could be hanging out listening to Katniss mope for 200 pages? Generally I love first person point of view, but I honestly think this book would have done much better with sections in third person, to show more of what was going on in different parts of the story.

In the end, it was Katniss herself that threw the final shovelful of dirt on my opinion of Mockingjay. She spends most of the book in a state of confusion and borderline hysteria, yet for all that emotion she narrates like a robot. The writing is cold and distant when it should be passionate, telling when it should be showing; Katniss’s flat voice just can’t support the vast amounts of introspection the final book offers up. And despite all she’s been through, the Katniss at the end of Mockingjay is just a crazier version of the same person who first stepped forward at the Reaping in book one. She doesn’t learn, grow, or change much at all; she may act differently, but inside her head she’s just the same. Don’t get me wrong though, I do appreciate that the YA community has attached itself to a female character who’s too busy making human pincushions with her arrows to swoon over a big manly man.

After all is said and done, my verdict is this: The Hunger Games is a series with lots of interesting concepts, which the characters and writing fail to sustain over the period of the trilogy. Read and enjoy the first book, but don’t feel compelled to go on from there.