Hunger.Games.

I definitely jumped on the Hunger Games bandwagon this month. After waiting so long to read Harry Potter [because everyone else was reading it] and then thoroughly enjoying it, I decided not to wait until the fuss was over this time. Just jumped right in. 

I was shocked that I became so quickly engrossed in the plot- I read each book in a matter of days and found myself cancelling plans so I could stay home to read it. It was like I had entered into a new world and the 'cliff hangers' at the end of each chapter begged the reader to keep going. 

Many people had strong opinions about which book was the best, how they would've written the 'love triangle' to end up, the way the war would play out, etc. What struck me most was the obvious comparison between the Capitol residents and citizens of the United States. The people in the Capitol were blissfully ignorant of the suffering outside of their district, obsessed about their looks, had so much food that they would throw up just to keep enjoying the process of eating more, and loved watching the Hunger Games [children slaughtering one another for entertainment]. In the last book, most of us were rooting for the Capitol to be overtaken. Once that happened, though, we realized that the new group of people were going to rule in the same, violent way. They also wanted a Hunger Games event, but with the oppressors becoming the oppressed. This concept alone disturbed me beyond all others in the book, I think because it was most realistic. So often we, as a nation, believe that we know what is best for all other nations and people groups. Usually this ends with us joining or starting a violent war, claiming that we're killing to stop the killing. It begs the questions, 'When does violence ever lead to peace?' and 'How does one group killing to get what they want stop another group from killing to get what they want?' I'm not sure what logic has led us to these conclusions [other than ethnocentrism], but these parallels were easily drawn in the book. This sad fact was enough to outweigh any hope the book brought. 

The one glimmer of hope though, was that the main character was able to move beyond her fears and trauma to function in normal society. She was able to love someone, to have a family and to live in some kind of peace, even though she fully remembered and continued to wrestle with the trauma she had experienced. This is what we hope for with our refugee clients- that they are able to cope with their trauma and past and use that to integrate with the new self they are creating in this culture. It's too easy to try and forget our pasts. To reconcile the hard past with our present selves is such a beautiful concept- and I think the author portrayed it in a very realistic way.

As I think about the citizens of the Capitol, I am sickened to realize that most of them were drawn to the Hunger Games each year because of their love for drama, violence and romance. It dawned on me that probably I was the exact same- that those characteristics were exactly what drew me to this book trilogy and kept me hooked until the end. Yikes.

Such heavy concepts for a book written for such a young audience! Middle school English classes, watch out!