Hunger Games

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, not to sound like a movie critic but... there was love, betrayal, violence and romance all wrapped in 374 pages. The book is part one of an anticipated three part series, two of which are already out. The Hunger Games describes a futuristic look at north America after it has become the fictional nation of Panem divided into 12 districts and run by the "capitol." Each district has a different skill or objective that they maintain, for example district 11 is the agricultural district. The districts get poorer as they go from 1-12. The main characters are Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Prim Everdeen and Gale from district 12. The capitol makes the 12 districts give 2 people every year to fight in the Hunger Games to the death. There can only be one winner. Prim, Katniss' younger sister is chosen from district 12 along with Peeta. Katniss volunteers for Prim because she is only 12 years old. Peeta and Katniss decide to play the angle that they are in love in order to get sponsors for the games and a good rating with the crowd. There is only one problem...Peeta really is in love with Katniss. This creates a love story and naturally the crowd falls for it until the end when they are asked by the capitol to kill eachother. They both act like they are going to eat the poisinous berries that they discovered but the capitol intervenes and lets them both live. Once again Gale was not joking around he was planning on killing himself. Throughout the story there are alliances made and revenge plots and everything a good story should have.
Okay...now looking at the "literary merit" of this story...debatable. I have always felt that a plot driven story ie: the hunger games, does not necessarily need to rank high in literary merit because for most readers they are into the fast paced and adrenaline feel that the story provides. However, for this story considering that it is three parts and the first two are just slightly under 400 pages there is certainly room for a writer to display their talents. Now...does she do it? I would say yes. While this story is very typical love/action story I will give it the benefit of the doubt that it is going to have a better twist as the series goes on. I say this only because I have faith in Collins writing ability because of a few aspects of the story. She really created the characters well and provided a sublety about their character that is hard to fake. It is hard to tell until he actually says it if Peeta is really in love with Katniss or is just playing it for the show. As a matter as a fact since it is in first person, Katniss brings this into question herself by singing the Whitney Houston song "Does he really love Me?" Well...not quite. Another sublety that I was impressed with was when Rue, the little girl from district 12 that reminds readers of Prim said to Katniss about Peeta, "I didn't think he was faking it," or something to that effect. I realy like when authors utilize somewhat minor characters for major themes, although that can be seen as a desperate attempt to interject a thought that the writer simply could not imply by simply writing and letting the story be.
In my Literature class we were discussing some themes about this book and people suggested a potential "Marxist lens" for the story. I believe that some books ie: Anthem really try to put a political spin on things and make it so obvious that the author loses credit as collateral to an agenda. I really do not think that this author had any politics in mind other than providing a thought for an extreme future world. However, this in itself could be a comment on literary merit. With a 1000 pages (considering that this series will be around that) can an author re-create a more realisitc look at what our world would be in the future? Not to say that this author is not talented however, it seems easy to avoid literature because readers will be blinded with the extreme notion of this future world. Once again who is to say which is better, if a reader smiles, cries, or gets involved in a book the author has done their job, I am not ashamed to say I did atleast a little of each of these things.