On The Hunger Games
Mar. 28th, 2012 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaI can't believe I never posted about the Hunger Games here. I read them in July and subjected my Facebook friends to constant updates (erm, all three of them. Yes, I checked. Timeline is useful for SOMETHING lol) about how I couldn't put them down and everyone should read them RIGHT NOW. I should have written about them sooner. My current impression of them is heavily tainted by discussions with my brother and the movie.
A lot of people compare HG to Battle Royale, which is to be expected since they both explore the theme of young adults being forced into a confined area and murder all their peers until only one "victor" remains at the behest of a totalitarian government. I tweeted earlier that it's not really fair to compare them, as it's like comparing apples and oranges; they're only alike in that they're both fruit. It has been a very long time since I read Battle Royale (2004? I think?) and about the only thing I remember with much clarity is the long description of one character's eyes being gouged out. Both books end with a pair of "winners" rather than a lone one, and that's about where the similarities end.
People have also been comparing the Hunger Games to Twilight, because of a first-person female voice and a love triangle. Apples and oranges again; just fruit. Twilight is, at heart, a romance story + vampires, and Hunger Games is more about the effects of war.
All I really remember from my first read of the trilogy was "holy crap these are AMAZING". They were decently written, and used some of the most obvious "cliffhangers" at the ends of chapters to keep me reading well past my bedtime, but I didn't care. I enjoyed them, and I recommended them to everyone, and would happily discuss how OMG AMAZEBALLS they were.
I made my brother read them and he was deeply, deeply affected by them, to the point where he declared that he may never forgive me for recommending them (and loaning him the copies to read). He said the most tragic thing about them was how yes, the main characters may have survived the war, but they would never, ever be truly FREE of it. To make an obscure quote, you can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the tiger. He put into words what I had felt at the end of the trilogy but had no idea how to put a name to.
Having now seen the movie (which I thought was wonderfully done) and re-read the first book and the end of Mockingjay, I too have found them to be deeply profound. As far as I recall, Battle Royale was far more focused on the horrific ways the students found to kill each other, and it ended with the two characters escaping the island, and that was it. The Hunger Games, just the first book, I was so relieved that Katniss and Peeta were allowed to win together, and noted with joy that I only had 10 pages left to read. Those 10 pages were almost worse than the 100 that preceded it, dealing with survival in the arena. The last 10 pages were about the survival of the government who was convinced that "you" were deliberately trying to instigate a rebellion on the scale that inspired the creation of the Hunger Games to start with. My stomach was tying itself in knots trying to desperately hope that "I" could convince everyone that I'd had no idea how my actions could be perceived, even though I knew all along that I didn't give a rat's ass what anyone THOUGHT I was trying to do.
Reading the end of Mockingjay had tears pouring down my face for a full half hour. "I" was a survivor, utterly and totally broken by a system that would no longer affect anyone else but had done irreparable damage to absolutely everyone I knew, and thousands and thousands more that I didn't. The only feeling I can clearly remember at the end of Battle Royale was "well, that was interesting".
I plan on re-reading Battle Royale sometime soonish to better be able to compare the two intelligently, but even chatting with people who are better acquainted with it, BR is a novel about gruesome ways to die at the hands of your peers, and HG is about the aftermath of being forced to kill your peers. Neither is very fun to experience.
A lot of people compare HG to Battle Royale, which is to be expected since they both explore the theme of young adults being forced into a confined area and murder all their peers until only one "victor" remains at the behest of a totalitarian government. I tweeted earlier that it's not really fair to compare them, as it's like comparing apples and oranges; they're only alike in that they're both fruit. It has been a very long time since I read Battle Royale (2004? I think?) and about the only thing I remember with much clarity is the long description of one character's eyes being gouged out. Both books end with a pair of "winners" rather than a lone one, and that's about where the similarities end.
People have also been comparing the Hunger Games to Twilight, because of a first-person female voice and a love triangle. Apples and oranges again; just fruit. Twilight is, at heart, a romance story + vampires, and Hunger Games is more about the effects of war.
All I really remember from my first read of the trilogy was "holy crap these are AMAZING". They were decently written, and used some of the most obvious "cliffhangers" at the ends of chapters to keep me reading well past my bedtime, but I didn't care. I enjoyed them, and I recommended them to everyone, and would happily discuss how OMG AMAZEBALLS they were.
I made my brother read them and he was deeply, deeply affected by them, to the point where he declared that he may never forgive me for recommending them (and loaning him the copies to read). He said the most tragic thing about them was how yes, the main characters may have survived the war, but they would never, ever be truly FREE of it. To make an obscure quote, you can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can't take the jungle out of the tiger. He put into words what I had felt at the end of the trilogy but had no idea how to put a name to.
Having now seen the movie (which I thought was wonderfully done) and re-read the first book and the end of Mockingjay, I too have found them to be deeply profound. As far as I recall, Battle Royale was far more focused on the horrific ways the students found to kill each other, and it ended with the two characters escaping the island, and that was it. The Hunger Games, just the first book, I was so relieved that Katniss and Peeta were allowed to win together, and noted with joy that I only had 10 pages left to read. Those 10 pages were almost worse than the 100 that preceded it, dealing with survival in the arena. The last 10 pages were about the survival of the government who was convinced that "you" were deliberately trying to instigate a rebellion on the scale that inspired the creation of the Hunger Games to start with. My stomach was tying itself in knots trying to desperately hope that "I" could convince everyone that I'd had no idea how my actions could be perceived, even though I knew all along that I didn't give a rat's ass what anyone THOUGHT I was trying to do.
Reading the end of Mockingjay had tears pouring down my face for a full half hour. "I" was a survivor, utterly and totally broken by a system that would no longer affect anyone else but had done irreparable damage to absolutely everyone I knew, and thousands and thousands more that I didn't. The only feeling I can clearly remember at the end of Battle Royale was "well, that was interesting".
I plan on re-reading Battle Royale sometime soonish to better be able to compare the two intelligently, but even chatting with people who are better acquainted with it, BR is a novel about gruesome ways to die at the hands of your peers, and HG is about the aftermath of being forced to kill your peers. Neither is very fun to experience.
