ND Wilson on Why Hunger Games is Flawed to Its Core

[Rosy]

I didn't love everything about HG, but I think this guy completely missed the point. Katniss isn't a heroine, she is a girl who is trying to survive, playing a part to protect the people she loves. I would say the only time she acts autonomously based on any sense of her own principles was her last action in Mockingjay. That is the one time (IMO) she refuses to do what is expected of her to protect her family, friends, or herself.

 

Katniss is primarily motivated by survival. That last action is the one time she does anything particularly brave or unexpected. And even that was arguably an act of emotional survival.

 

I think each of the characters acts in a way that is consistent with his/her motivations, if somewhat one-dimensionally. The whole point of HG isn't even revolution, really--it's survival. The revolution wasn't even a true revolution, IMO. It was only successful because it had the support of a nation outside of itself that never truly intended the people of Panem to have true freedom.

 

I think he is dead on. Those saying this isn't a Christian world view novel maybe right on that point, but they've missed the point he was making with those examples. Each of those writers, in his view, has an insight into how people really act. Collins does not, her characters do things that are totally out of keeping with their previous behavior and for that matter what real people do.

 

I had read a series of works prior to reading the Hunger Games that gave me the other half of his equation: totalitarian governments don't work the way we see the one in the Hunger Games work either. Once again Collins doesn't understand how people really act. No way do such governments survive setting up the Hunger Games for 75 years; why? Because by having the violence be totally predictable they would have allowed those under them to device strategies against the games themselves.

 

Think about the success of the Civil Rights movement. Because leaders of the Civil Rights movement knew exactly what the other side would respond with, they made sure to put that violence in the face of the TV viewers. How long did we as a country need to see peaceful demonstrators beaten and pushed down the street by fire hoses before we stopped it?

 

Totalitarian governments are much more subtle. They don't allow people to feel bound together by any ties like each district does. Instead they quietly and subtly destroy those sorts of ties. They certainly don't host a yearly kill kids fest that binds each group of people more tightly not only to their own group to others as well.

I disagree with your assessment. How long were black people oppressed before finally achieving legal equality? Longer than 75 years, and one can argue that they still don't have actual equality 50 years after MLKJr. The Capitol in HG was successful (for a time) because they controlled the media and because they played on peoples' fears of losing loved ones.

[Candid]

How can one know how people will react within a dystopian society, really? It is fiction. Like Star Trek. I thought that given the situation created, and the way that each district was isolated and pitted against each other and always equally punished (even the winning district loses one child) seemed quite feasible to me. Over history many people do the wrong thing and have no problem sacrificing others to save themselves. If districts are kept starving and get rewards based on performance in the games, doesn't that give each kid in the games an incentive to win the games, for those at home? It seems more than plausible that people would do this. I think that it is less likely for people to do differently. History is littered with examples of people doing EXACTLY the "wrong" thing, but at the time I am sure those people didn't think if it that way at all.

 

But this is my personal opinion.

 

If it were more common for people to "do the right thing" all the time, then why do those who do stand out so brightly? Why does the situation exist at all? I think the idea was interesting yet simplistic, not on par with Brave New World and its ilk, but a ponderance that could only come from the world we live in today. The other thing is that the whole book is an exagerrated example, it lacks subtlety. the totalitarian government is not subtle. It is totally in your face and makes no attempt to hide it. It creates the situation through brute force and pain.

 

Whatever. I need to do our history now. ;)

 

There have been real totalitarian governments who have gotten people to do horrible things: think Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russian and Mao's China. In each of these real world examples they have behaved similarly. For instance both the Cultural Revolution and Hitler turned children against their families. Or in the Stanford experiment where undergraduates came up with the exact same thing German prison guards did: put their foot on the back of a prisoner who was trying to do push-ups.

 

For more on this theme, turn your eyes back to the first Star Trek and watch "Patterns of Force."

 

Terrible societies do the same things because people, their clay, are the same.

 

Further in history people in such societies also follow similar patterns as well. Although the reviewer identifies self-sacrifice as a Christian virtue it is more wide spread: Buddhist monks self-immolated to protest China.

 

Great writers write from a knowledge of that human behavior: Orwell creates a believable society in 1984 because he knows how people behave.

 

What the reviewer is saying is that Collins doesn't. Her characters are all over the place, being self-sacrificing one moment and killers the next. It doesn't add up.

[Candid]

Candid, I'm curious if you've read the entire trilogy, or just The Hunger Games.

 

Through three books, Katniss has one overriding concern: to save what is left of her family.

 

Just curious which series you're referring to.

 

Again, have you read all three books?

 

The districts were isolated from each other, pitted and played against each other (think about how you as a reader feel about the tributes from District 1, even though at least one of them would be dead at the end of the games?), presented to those in the Capitol and other districts in entirely stereotypical and diminished terms, stripped of any semblance of authentic individuality in favour of costumes, tricks and scripts.

 

Yes, I have.

[Candid]

I disagree with your assessment. How long were black people oppressed before finally achieving legal equality? Longer than 75 years, and one can argue that they still don't have actual equality 50 years after MLKJr. The Capitol in HG was successful (for a time) because they controlled the media and because they played on peoples' fears of losing loved ones.

 

Quite true, but they were under a real society not a fake one and their situation was much more complex. There was no in your face Hunger Games. If anything they were under something even worse than a true totalitarian society, they were under a society that was both totalitarian in sections and friendly and caring in sections and sometimes it was probably impossible to tell which was which. Which means there was no focus for them to easily target.

 

This is not the case in Collin's fictional world. BIG target there. If you read about the internal debate about the Civil Rights movement there was a lot less certainty that the peaceful resistance method would succeed. Many voices in the African American community wanted to continue to work through laws and judicial rulings. Martin Luther King saw what the Hunger Games should have caused in the book's past: if you make a big ugly stench, those on the sidelines can not ignore it, they will be forced to act. Gandhi did the same in India.

 

My point here is that the Hunger Games is that big, ugly stench. Once the society has such a thing in front of it, it can't turn away. It is forced to act. No dominant power would ever make or survive such a thing for long. Certainly not 75 years. None has.

 

A better comparison are the full on totalitarian societies. None of them had such a big target, but how long did they last: USSR about 60 years? China is still ongoing, but I suspect much more open than it was. So even without a focal point this kind of society does not last. With a focal point, it falls quicker in my view.

 

Again, Collins doesn't seem to understand how people act and think OR she is forced by her plot to make them turn to her will whether that is natural or not. Horrible societies have existed, we know how they work and act. We also know how people think, feel, and act.

[FaithManor]

There have been real totalitarian governments who have gotten people to do horrible things: think Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russian and Mao's China. In each of these real world examples they have behaved similarly. For instance both the Cultural Revolution and Hitler turned children against their families. Or in the Stanford experiment where undergraduates came up with the exact same thing German prison guards did: put their foot on the back of a prisoner who was trying to do push-ups.

 

For more on this theme, turn your eyes back to the first Star Trek and watch "Patterns of Force."

 

Terrible societies do the same things because people, their clay, are the same.

 

Further in history people in such societies also follow similar patterns as well. Although the reviewer identifies self-sacrifice as a Christian virtue it is more wide spread: Buddhist monks self-immolated to protest China.

 

Great writers write from a knowledge of that human behavior: Orwell creates a believable society in 1984 because he knows how people behave.

 

What the reviewer is saying is that Collins doesn't. Her characters are all over the place, being self-sacrificing one moment and killers the next. It doesn't add up.

 

 

As a modern play on Ancient Rome, it does add up. "Panem et Circenses" - bread and circuses. The gladitorial fights were not staged! These were for the "entertainment" of the masses - wealthy patrons backed their favorites, audiences dressed up decadently for "the games", people painted their faces, you name it! Peasant and slave boys were seized at young ages and forced to train for these fights on pain of torture and death to their families for refusing. Those families whose sons went into the arena, laid down arms, and refused to kill found themselves on the terrorizing end of the Roman arm for their children's folly! Glory was found in being a "career", a really good killing machine. The families of such gladiators were treated to extra food, clothing, better shelter, protection, etc. It wasn't pretty. We still have societies today that consider "adulthood" to be 12 or 13 and impel what are to us "children" to kill or be killed or watch their family be killed. Katniss was 16..faced with that at 16, my decisions would have likely been all over the map too. At 12 or 13, I can only guess what conclusions internal terror might compel my immature mind to act upon.

 

A mid-teen in that situation would be "all over the map". She wasn't meant to be a hero, just a kid fighting for survival in a cruel world with a dearly loved family's very lives hanging in the balance on whether or not she came out on top! Sick, for certain, real...yes. There are definitely children in this world who face this reality even now. Maybe what people should rail against is that it's 2012 and humankind still hasn't found a way to prevent totalitarian, dystopian regimes from coming to power and terrifying the masses. It is good food for thought whether or not one wants to read this particular set of books. To say that Susan Collins characters do not make sense, is to not take a really good look at human nature and in particular, those that haven't even reached maturity.

 

I personally think it isn't all that far-fetched for a modern day Ancient Rome to exist in modern society. Technology gives corrupt goverments a very distinct edge in the battle to control everyone's lives. They can control the media, banking and monetary systems, food distribution systems, utility distribution, and have the fire power to wipe out those that don't agree. Not far-fetched at all. I would expect under such conditions that a number of humans would act just like Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Snow, and the masses of "slaves" in the districts just trying to get survive. Maybe that is a sober indictment against my fellow man, but I do think it is a realistic one.

 

Faith

[nmoira]

Quite true, but they were under a real society not a fake one and their situation was much more complex. There was no in your face Hunger Games. If anything they were under something even worse than a true totalitarian society, they were under a society that was both totalitarian in sections and friendly and caring in sections and sometimes it was probably impossible to tell which was which. Which means there was no focus for them to easily target.

Except that we're talking about a post-apocalyptic society in which the media is wholly controlled by a government that retained the technological wherewithal to separate and contain the pockets of people left.

 

This is not the case in Collin's fictional world. BIG target there. If you read about the internal debate about the Civil Rights movement there was a lot less certainty that the peaceful resistance method would succeed. Many voices in the African American community wanted to continue to work through laws and judicial rulings. Martin Luther King saw what the Hunger Games should have caused in the book's past: if you make a big ugly stench, those on the sidelines can not ignore it, they will be forced to act. Gandhi did the same in India.

Civil rights in the US is not a good comparison. What about the caste system in India? Major injustice there. Or apartheid? Or slavery. It took more than 75 years to wipe that out, at least openly.

 

My point here is that the Hunger Games is that big, ugly stench. Once the society has such a thing in front of it, it can't turn away. It is forced to act. No dominant power would ever make or survive such a thing for long. Certainly not 75 years. None has.

Shall we make a list of injustices as spectacle over the centuries?

[PeacefulChaos]

Quite true, but they were under a real society not a fake one and their situation was much more complex. There was no in your face Hunger Games. If anything they were under something even worse than a true totalitarian society, they were under a society that was both totalitarian in sections and friendly and caring in sections and sometimes it was probably impossible to tell which was which. Which means there was no focus for them to easily target.

 

This is not the case in Collin's fictional world. BIG target there. If you read about the internal debate about the Civil Rights movement there was a lot less certainty that the peaceful resistance method would succeed. Many voices in the African American community wanted to continue to work through laws and judicial rulings. Martin Luther King saw what the Hunger Games should have caused in the book's past: if you make a big ugly stench, those on the sidelines can not ignore it, they will be forced to act. Gandhi did the same in India.

 

My point here is that the Hunger Games is that big, ugly stench. Once the society has such a thing in front of it, it can't turn away. It is forced to act. No dominant power would ever make or survive such a thing for long. Certainly not 75 years. None has.

 

A better comparison are the full on totalitarian societies. None of them had such a big target, but how long did they last: USSR about 60 years? China is still ongoing, but I suspect much more open than it was. So even without a focal point this kind of society does not last. With a focal point, it falls quicker in my view.

 

Again, Collins doesn't seem to understand how people act and think OR she is forced by her plot to make them turn to her will whether that is natural or not. Horrible societies have existed, we know how they work and act. We also know how people think, feel, and act.

 

I guess I just can't help but wonder... it seems like you don't like the books because they aren't realistic.

But it's a book. A story. Fiction. So I don't quite get why it matters?

[radiobrain]

There have been real totalitarian governments who have gotten people to do horrible things: think Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russian and Mao's China. In each of these real world examples they have behaved similarly. For instance both the Cultural Revolution and Hitler turned children against their families. Or in the Stanford experiment where undergraduates came up with the exact same thing German prison guards did: put their foot on the back of a prisoner who was trying to do push-ups.

 

For more on this theme, turn your eyes back to the first Star Trek and watch "Patterns of Force."

 

Terrible societies do the same things because people, their clay, are the same.

 

Further in history people in such societies also follow similar patterns as well. Although the reviewer identifies self-sacrifice as a Christian virtue it is more wide spread: Buddhist monks self-immolated to protest China.

 

Great writers write from a knowledge of that human behavior: Orwell creates a believable society in 1984 because he knows how people behave.

 

What the reviewer is saying is that Collins doesn't. Her characters are all over the place, being self-sacrificing one moment and killers the next. It doesn't add up.

 

I think you have actually made my point. I think the issue is that you don't believe that this situation could exist. I think people are generally a certain way in large groups, and always very different on individual levels.

 

I hated Orwell, and I found his book tedious and unbelievable. Then again, I haven't read it since 8th grade...so I leave room to have a different opinion. ;)

 

Fiction is fiction. So, you don't think the same way I do about it. So what? The point about the characters being all over the place might be by design, by careless writing, or just an opinion. I think people are totally like that. All over the place, changing their minds, motivations and ideas on a whim and as experience happens. I guess if you are looking at the books from the point of view that the author of the article is, it would be flawed at its core, as most of the books can't be processed well through that lens, IMHO. I mean you can, but you would come to a similar conclusion.

 

I personally took these books as in interesting look at an angle of our society (hollywood worship/reality TV and the things that people subject themselves to just to be on screen) wrapped up with an evil government that is taken to an extreme. Brain candy. Nothing especially earth shattering, but thought provoking and entertaining as heck. I had to read them all immediately, one after the other, and don't have the same qualms about the books as others do. I think they are all fine. I have no preference from one to the next as they are all parts of a whole. I'm sort of like that. ;)

 

Brazil, 12 Monkeys, Minority Report, Terminator, Alien, 2001, Buckaroo Bonzai, Battlestar Galactica, Gattaca, Star Trek, Total Recall, THX1138, Blade Runner, The Matrix, CHildren of Men, Avatar, Logan's Run, Soylent green, Mad Max, to name a few (yes, I know they are movies, but HG was always destined for the movies, right?) are but a few of a gazillion differing views of futuristic societies gone awry. Are they all believable, in they way that some want HG to rise to? I also don't remember HG being set specifically on Earth. It is implied, of course, but it could be to give the kids that this book was aimed at a known palette to visualize the districts. It is YA fiction, after all. :D

 

Have you read her Gregor the Overlander series?

 

I think there is too much over analysis going on here. It is a book and a movie. You can choose to read it, see it or not. You either enjoyed it or not. The government is not requiring you read it, so who really cares? Jeez.

Edited May 29, 2012 by radiobrain

[Carol in Cal.]

 

To say that Susan Collins characters do not make sense, is to not take a really good look at human nature and in particular, those that haven't even reached maturity.

 

I personally think it isn't all that far-fetched for a modern day Ancient Rome to exist in modern society. Technology gives corrupt goverments a very distinct edge in the battle to control everyone's lives. They can control the media, banking and monetary systems, food distribution systems, utility distribution, and have the fire power to wipe out those that don't agree. Not far-fetched at all. I would expect under such conditions that a number of humans would act just like Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Snow, and the masses of "slaves" in the districts just trying to get survive. Maybe that is a sober indictment against my fellow man, but I do think it is a realistic one.

 

Faith

 

I agree. I liked the books. I thought that they were exciting and well done for what they were. And I thought that the character development of Katniss was very realistic, and that Peeta was quite a hero, albeit a quiet one, because he tried to do what was right the whole entire time. In the end of the third book, Katniss is in PTSD, and I thought that that was realistic too. I get tired of books where the hero just lives happily ever after. You don't go through things like that without a mark, and it's quite annoying to me as an adult (though I liked it as a teen) to see things portrayed as 'and now we revert to our happy little life completely.'

[Rosy]

Great writers write from a knowledge of that human behavior: Orwell creates a believable society in 1984 because he knows how people behave.

 

What the reviewer is saying is that Collins doesn't. Her characters are all over the place, being self-sacrificing one moment and killers the next. It doesn't add up.

There are many flaws Collins' writing, but inconsistencies within the characters isn't one of them, in my opinion. People are complex; very few of us are always brave, or always self-serving...especially when you consider that the HG characters are teenagers. :P Most of us are more likely to sacrifice ourselves or others for a family member than for a stranger, and I would say this is especially true with teens.

[elegantlion]

I agree. I liked the books. I thought that they were exciting and well done for what they were. And I thought that the character development of Katniss was very realistic, and that Peeta was quite a hero, albeit a quiet one, because he tried to do what was right the whole entire time. In the end of the third book, Katniss is in PTSD, and I thought that that was realistic too. I get tired of books where the hero just lives happily ever after. You don't go through things like that without a mark, and it's quite annoying to me as an adult (though I liked it as a teen) to see things portrayed as 'and now we revert to our happy little life completely.'

 

:iagree: :iagree: :iagree:

[nmoira]

There are many flaws Collins' writing, but inconsistencies within the characters isn't one of them, in my opinion. People are complex; very few of us are always brave, or always self-serving...especially when you consider that the HG characters are teenagers. :P Most of us are more likely to sacrifice ourselves or others for a family member than for a stranger, and I would say this is especially true with teens.

:iagree:

 

Katniss did not sacrifice herself to be a martyr or to prove a point politically or because she thought she was going to be rewarded in an afterlife, and to compare her to those who in effect stage their own end games (can you tell I have little tolerance for martyrdom?) is to miss this point entirely. She was acting to save her family.

[Jean in Newcastle]

You could argue whether or not the message of the Hunger Games is flawed or not according to a Christian worldview. But the article doesn't set it up that way. He's critiquing the actual writing against that rubric and I think he is flawed in his reasoning by doing so. If you are going to critique fiction, I think you need to look at the piece as a whole - at it's themes, characters and plot. Is it internally consistent in it's themes, character and plot development?

[Candid]

I guess I just can't help but wonder... it seems like you don't like the books because they aren't realistic.

But it's a book. A story. Fiction. So I don't quite get why it matters?

 

Actually I love science fiction and fantasy, have been reading it for 40 years. BUT early on I learned the point was to take real people and put them in fantastic settings to ask questions we couldn't ask. This series doesn't do this in my view because the people and their governments don't act like real people, just puppets to the plot.

[Candid]

I think you have actually made my point. I think the issue is that you don't believe that this situation could exist. I think people are generally a certain way in large groups, and always very different on individual levels.

 

Again you miss my point. It's not believable because the people and the government they supposedly create is not believable. I don't find the characters to be individually believable or the overall group actions to be believable either.

 

I hated Orwell, and I found his book tedious and unbelievable. Then again, I haven't read it since 8th grade...so I leave room to have a different opinion. ;)

 

You might go back and read him. He was unfortunate enough in my reading of late to bump up against Solzhenitsyn so parts of 1984 were less potent to me because I reality to compare it to.

 

I think there is too much over analysis going on here. It is a book and a movie. You can choose to read it, see it or not. You either enjoyed it or not. The government is not requiring you read it, so who really cares? Jeez.

 

Never too much analysis going on in my book, but I will tell you that I did find the books to be quick brisk read that engaged me briefly. But when people start saying the characters and situations were real, I'm afraid I find that not the case. I thought Kafka's Metamorphosis had better characterization than any of these books did. I will admit it is not fair to compare Collins to Kafka or Solzhenitsyn, but I also found her characters no where near other children's books either.

[Candid]

Except that we're talking about a post-apocalyptic society in which the media is wholly controlled by a government that retained the technological wherewithal to separate and contain the pockets of people left.

 

Civil rights in the US is not a good comparison. What about the caste system in India? Major injustice there. Or apartheid? Or slavery. It took more than 75 years to wipe that out, at least openly.

 

Shall we make a list of injustices as spectacle over the centuries?

 

I agree with all these historical examples, but my point is that none of them had a Hunger Games that allowed for the focus to overturn them quickly. In India and the US, systems were overturned when the enslaved made a Hunger Games situation that the society could not look away from. Quite the reverse of the book. If you go back to slavery, many folks would point to Uncle Tom's Cabin as the Hunger Games of its day, the force that made that society (at least in the North) focus on slavery. Each of these examples were things created by the underdogs not by the government. This in my view shows how far off Collins is her ability to understand how people act.

[Candid]

As a modern play on Ancient Rome, it does add up. "Panem et Circenses" - bread and circuses. The gladitorial fights were not staged! These were for the "entertainment" of the masses - wealthy patrons backed their favorites, audiences dressed up decadently for "the games", people painted their faces, you name it! Peasant and slave boys were seized at young ages and forced to train for these fights on pain of torture and death to their families for refusing. Those families whose sons went into the arena, laid down arms, and refused to kill found themselves on the terrorizing end of the Roman arm for their children's folly! Glory was found in being a "career", a really good killing machine. The families of such gladiators were treated to extra food, clothing, better shelter, protection, etc. It wasn't pretty. We still have societies today that consider "adulthood" to be 12 or 13 and impel what are to us "children" to kill or be killed or watch their family be killed. Katniss was 16..faced with that at 16, my decisions would have likely been all over the map too. At 12 or 13, I can only guess what conclusions internal terror might compel my immature mind to act upon.

 

Rome is an interesting example. But my understanding of the games is that the source of folks was from several places: war captives, mostly adult males (women and children were enslaved but not put in the games), criminals, and some volunteers. Plus, the games weren't in your face the way the books portrays the games. In the most similar of those sources, war captives, they came from months and years of travel away and their relatives probably had no idea what happened to them.

 

A mid-teen in that situation would be "all over the map". She wasn't meant to be a hero, just a kid fighting for survival in a cruel world with a dearly loved family's very lives hanging in the balance on whether or not she came out on top! Sick, for certain, real...yes. There are definitely children in this world who face this reality even now. Maybe what people should rail against is that it's 2012 and humankind still hasn't found a way to prevent totalitarian, dystopian regimes from coming to power and terrifying the masses. It is good food for thought whether or not one wants to read this particular set of books. To say that Susan Collins characters do not make sense, is to not take a really good look at human nature and in particular, those that haven't even reached maturity.

 

I think the teen thing is the strongest argument in favor of Collins, but I can't help but remember that in societies like Rome that there was no such thing as adolescence and that children in that society would have been different than our own teens. So I'm not so sure.

 

I personally think it isn't all that far-fetched for a modern day Ancient Rome to exist in modern society. Technology gives corrupt goverments a very distinct edge in the battle to control everyone's lives. They can control the media, banking and monetary systems, food distribution systems, utility distribution, and have the fire power to wipe out those that don't agree. Not far-fetched at all. I would expect under such conditions that a number of humans would act just like Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch, Snow, and the masses of "slaves" in the districts just trying to get survive. Maybe that is a sober indictment against my fellow man, but I do think it is a realistic one.

 

Faith

 

While I agree that we should all keep our eyes open not just for circuses but "bread and circuses" I suspect that the way to the games in our society resembles the last two ways Rome got gladiators: criminals (who could earn their way out) and volunteers (think reality TV). I'm not even totally sure about the criminals.

[Scarlett]

I did not read Wilson's article this way at all. It never occurred to me that he was criticizing The Hunger Games on the basis of it failing as Christian allegory. It seemed clear to me that he was criticizing on the basis of the characters being poorly developed and inconsistent.

 

That is what I got out of it too.