Hunger Games Themes

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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins takes place in a nation called Panem; the nation consists of the Capitol and the twelve districts. The Capitol is the largest city in Panem and serves as the government in the story. The people who lived in the Capitol are the wealthiest of Panem and the city runs off of all the labor the twelve districts are forced to do. And in charge of Panem is President Snow. The nation of Panem was separated into thirteen different districts but after a rebellion there were only twelve districts remaining. The districts are subjected to the will of the authoritarian Capitol and have no say in anything. Each district has something different to offer for example District 12 provides coal while District 10 provides grain.…show more content…
Every year the Capitol holds what is known as The Hunger Games where twenty-four children from the ages of twelve to eighteen are randomly selected to participate in a competition to fight and kill until there is only one left standing. The Hunger Games served as a lesson to all the districts that the Capitol has the power of taking your child and putting them is a situation where they could die and it served as entertainment. In the novel The Hunger Games there are a few recurring themes such as the suffering as entertainment, survival, the importance of appearance, and government control. The Hunger Games uses the tributes’ suffering as entertainment, and the more the tributes are suffering the more entertaining it gets for the viewers in the Capitol. What makes the game entertaining is watching the tributes fighting and dying; in the book Katniss mentions the past Games and she says that what made them successful was that the viewers wants to see the tributes battling each other and not dying too quickly because that means that their entertainment is gone. One example of this is at the end of the book when Cato is slowly dying,…show more content…
For example, after the reaping took place, Katniss didn’t cry because she did not want to come across weak. Also, the importance of appearance is emphasized at the opening ceremony with the amount of preparation Katniss had to go through to just stand on a chariot and wave; the main focus of the scene was Katniss’s dress that Cinna designs for her, it has fake flames which then gives Katniss her nickname as “the girl on fire”. The tributes that are more memorable tend to catch the sponsors eyes that can provide them with the supplies they will need to survive in the arena. For example, Katniss tries to hide her tears in the games because it looks very unattractive to the sponsors. The most memorable part of Katniss’s strategy is to get sponsors romancing with Peeta. In the games, Haymitch sends notes hinting that Katniss needs to play up her feelings for Peeta to convince the viewer and the Capital that they are truly in love with each other. This is part of Haymitch’s plan to gain more gifts from the sponsors and it even got the Capitol to let two tributes from the same district be the victors. This reflects that a reality television is not a reality it is all an act to gain more viewers and to get higher
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