by Daniel Xiao Wang

Created on: August 10, 2011

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a young adult novel about Katniss Everdeen, a young woman living in District Twelve on Panem- a country that “rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America.”

Every year Panem celebrates the Hunger Games, an annual reminder to the districts of an uprising that the capital put down. The Hunger games are meant to keep the districts in line and prevent them from going back to the “dark days” of rebellion.

“The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins. Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy.”

The novel, The Hunger Games, was widely celebrated and read, attracting a large fan base. The horror of reading as kids killed each other in a perverse game show like setting appealed to a large audience. For a young adult novel there is a good deal of violence and nudity. And of course, there is the obligatory romance. In this case the true nature of the romance is kept uncertain until later in the novel as Katniss works out her own feelings and tries to understand the feelings of her fellow Hunger Games tribute, Peeta Mellark. There is a boy back home, Gale, whom Katniss never had a romantic relationship with, but to whom Katniss would feel like she is betraying by falling in love with Peeta.

While the concept of the story was good and the plot entertaining, the writing was not great and the author at times seemed unsure and to be writing for the sake of writing.

Constantly the reader is thrown into Katniss' mind as she asks the same questions over and over. She is indecisive and at time juvenile while at times reasoned and prudent. Barely a paragraph goes by without some kind of mention as to what Katniss was thinking or feeling, or how she was angry or hungry. There is a lot of telling, not showing.

Quite frankly, I never felt any kind of emotional investment in Katniss. Nothing in the novel gave me reason to care or empathize with her. Mostly I wanted to yell at her to make up her own mind and stop complaining.

If not for the fast pace of the novel and the interesting plot I would not have been able to finish this one based on the poor writing alone. I will not be picking up part two, Catching Fire. Better to enjoy the poorly worked plot of book one and not muddle through any more.

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