Why The Hunger Games Reminded Me of a Horror Movie

How many people do you know who read The Hunger Games in a weekend or less? Of the sequel, Catching Fire, my cousin wrote on her Facebook that she couldn’t “get her eyes out of it.” However, It took me two and a half weeks, culminating in a four hour marathon reading session at the local coffee shop, just to get through book one.  Reading The Hunger Games was a chore.  I knew a dedicated reading session in public was the only way I’d ever finish it (also, I’d hoped to use it to meet women… and at least half of my plan worked).

When I first started the book, I recognized it as a story with staying power, unlike, say Twilight, which has the shelf life of a Beanie Baby.  No, despite the lack of a Newberry medal, I think The Hunger Games will be read in classrooms for discussion and at home for entertainment for many years to come.  Katniss Everdeen’s battle against herself, her peers and ultimately the government offers up so many topics for intelligent discussion.  In some ways it’s not so different from The Giver or even Ender’s Game.

Pictured: Vicious Killers

 For all you who haven’t read the book or seen the movie (which is probably none of you), I’ll summarize.  In the not-too-distant future all of North American has been united by a totalitarian government into a single country, called Panem, which is broken up into 12 districts.  At some time in the past the districts tried to start a revolution.  Every year since then, the government demands that each district offer two children between the ages of 12 and 18, called tributes, to compete in the Hunger Games as a reminder of who has the power. The Games  are a combination of Survivor, American Idol and gladiatorial combat.  The novel follows the journey of Katniss Everdeen, tribute from lowly District 12.  The Hunger Games novel is 1984 for the Jersey Shore generation.

As I reached the end of the book, however, it began to remind me of a movie—hillbilly horror film Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil. 

For all of you who haven’t heard of this cinematic gem (which is probably all of you), I’ll summarize.  Tucker and Dale are two well-meaning guys who just want to fix up their admittedly haunted-looking cabin.  A group of college students are camping nearby, when one of the girls falls in the river and nearly drowns.  Tucker and Dale rescue her and take her back to their cabin to nurse her back to health.  Unfortunately, the college kids think they’ve walked into Deliverance vs. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tucker and Dale think they’re surrounded by a teenage suicide cult, as every time one of the students gets near he or she manages to kill him or herself in a hilariously horrible way. 

Pictured: Harmless Hillbillies

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this.  I think The Hunger Games is tolerable because author Suzanne Collins goes out of her way to blunt the deaths by making them as indirect as possible. She relies on convenience and coincidence to keep Katniss from becoming a monster.  Tucker and Dale uses some of the same tricks to be funny.  Katniss doesn’t kill her opponents, the Tracker Jackers do.  Dale doesn’t throw the kid in the wood chipper, he just happens to bend over as the kid flings himself at him.  The opponents Katniss actually does kill have their humanity removed by not having names, or being depicted as too savage to count.  Just like the “Evil” Tucker and Dale are versus is an insane killer/preppy snob.

Admit it, you were at least a little curious

When I hear people who didn’t like the book wonder how a story with so much killing is so popular, I wonder how they missed the gentleness with which the killings were handled.  If obvious contrivances like the Tracker Jacker’s nest were removed from the story, if it were “realistic” in the least, I don’t think it’d be very popular.  Honestly, I think it’d be too gut-wrenching for most people. 

On that note, the big thing I kept hearing about The Hunger Games was that it was all about kids killing kids.  But I’ve got to ask, where there any children harmed in the making of the 74^th annual Hunger Games?

In our era of prolonged adolescence, I think we’ve lost touch with what makes an adult.  Were the competitors in the Hunger Games children because they were under the age of 18?  By our present legal standards, they were technically minors.  But does that make them children?

Consider Katniss.  She’s 16, provides for her family by keeping food on the table and protects them through an act of self-sacrifice.

Now consider the 26 year old guy who relies on his parents to pay his bills so he can complain on Facebook all day about how unfair life is.

Who is the adult here, and who the child?  One is a full decade older than the other.  Yet obviously, age has nothing to do with it.  The fact that one person is able to provide for herself and others and does it, while the other is equally capable and does not is the defining factor.  It’s what makes [SPOILER] the death of Rue so tragic.  She was the only child in the Games [END SPOILERS].

Because that last paragraph was sad...

The question of what makes one an adult is just one of the many discussions that can (and should) be launched from a reading of The Hunger Games.  We could also talk about the role of government in private society, situational ethics, the morality of “reality” television and on and on.  So while I can’t be thrilled about a story where the main premise is people killing each other, I will say that Collins wrote it in a gripping style (present tense, anyone?) and in a way that most people can stomach.  I think it’s great that a story with so much potential to generate thought and introspection is popular.  But only if it will generate thought and introspection…

Otherwise, we’re just being entertained by watching people kill each other.  And that’s probably a bad thing.