I've purposefully omitted direct reference to very dark bits of the book, Battle Royale (most of it in backstories of specific characters), but for those intending to read it, be warned.
(Also, am new to the trigger warning system, so sorry if I've left out anything. Do tell me in the comments.)
Preamble:
I'm just about to start Part III: The Victor, and things have certainly heated up. I really do recommend The Hunger Games. It has been absolutely thrilling, the well-paced and supsenseful prose carries you through and Katniss is simply an awesome character. The Hunger Games is fascinating as book and there are intriguing details all over the place (though not all of them well thought out). There are a few problematic aspects and various things that sit uncomfortably in my mind, but that is what is blog is for.
So onwards.
Story so far:
I'm not very good at summaries and much as I'll try to keep this sequential, this is likely to jump all over the place. For those who need a reminder, there are other detailed summaries on tvtropes or wikipedia.
But just quickly: Katniss and Peeta travel to the Capitol, the ruling city of Panem, on a train. We are told that Haymitch (only living winner from District 12) is their mentor and that he and Effie Trinket are to guide them through the process of preparing for the games. The two meet their stylists who prepare them for the opening ceremony (on chariots! on fire!) and then over the course of the next few days, they train and perform for the Gamemakers (who run the games, of course). Katniss and Peeta are told by Haymitch to pretend to be friends, despite the fact that they'll have to kill each other before the end.
The two do remarkably well and win the favour of the audience. At the interviews, Peeta reveals to everyone that he loves Katniss and that makes them all the more popular.
The games begin. Katniss suffers but survives burns and thirst and other tribulations. With the help of Rue, a twelve-year-old girl from the Argriculture District, Katniss drops a hallucinogenic waspsnest on some of the other contestants. They become friends and share knowledge and resources. Katniss sabotages the supplies of the strongest group (led by a "career tribute" named Cato).
At first, Peeta seems to have turned on her by joining with the career tributes, but then he saves Katniss. He then got stabbed but isn't dead yet.
Finally, Rue is killed by a boy from District 1 and following that is an announcement from the gamemakers that there is a rules change: Both tributes from the same district will be declared winners if they are the last two alive. (p.295)
The chapter ends with Katniss calling out Peeta's name.
Before the End...
It is tempting to seeThe Hunger Games as a version ofBattle Royale,but the similarities are surprisingly superficial once one gets past the Last One Standing aspect. The more I read, the more the small differences in the setup matter. The tributes of The Hunger Games are strangers to one another, whereas Battle Royale concerns itself with throwning thirty odd students of one class into the arena. The tributes recieve training and there is a system of external help. In Battle Royale, the opposite is true. In the book of Battle Royale, the games are not seen as special. They are but one of many that are going on up and down the country and they aren't spectated in the same way as the Hunger Games. The film adds more of a spectating element with the glimpses of news coverage, but it's certainly not a reality tv event.
Battle Royale is about the climate of suspicion and fear that a totalitarian goverment creates and uses to control its people. It asks the question of what does it take for one to turn against one's friends and neighbours. It asks the question of how do people - good, normal people - become informants. It's pyschologically quite complex, especially for a book that is almost always shelved with among the young adult novels at Waterstones. It is told in third person omniscient and it follows almost every student and what makes them break. Some of the portraits are better drawn than others. Some are quite problematic (especially the gay student) and the book also deals with some very dark material that isn't very child-friendly at all.
But the point is, the children all know each other and though they aren't all friends, the breakdown of their bonds is what the book ofBattle Royale is particularly interest in. There is even an extended version of the film that periodically intercuts with the class playing basketball. The juxtaposition is very stark. The opposite is true of The Hunger Games and the fact that all the other tributes are strangers to Katniss is partly why she (and the reader) can simply no mourn their passing.
There is a great variety of responses to their situation: some play the game and some simply refuse to; some try fight back (with a completely futile gesture); some protect their friends and some do the opposite. Many decide to act on their crushes profess their feelings. The responses of the tributes are far simpler and singluar. This is, in part, because the book is told solely from Katniss' point of view, but what glimpses of the others she sees show a far simpler picture. Most of them certainly don't know each other (being from different Districts) and few seem to have any qualms killing each other. Alliances may form, but they don't appear to be based on preexisting friendships of any kind. It is apparantly unheard of for tributes from the same District planning to work together in advance and making a show of their friendship (the way Katniss and Peeta did by holding hands at the parade). The training days between the reaping and the games beginning actually means most of the more immidiate responses become muted.
The exceptions are the kids from the wealthier districts, the volunteers, the ones who have been fed and trained throughout their lives for this moment. The tributess from 1, 2 and 4 traditionally have this look about them. It's technically against the rules to train tributes before they reach the Capitol, but it happens every year. In District 12, we call them the Career Tributes, or just the Careers. (p.115)
The Career Tributes are, for the most part, the immediate antagonists of the games. It is they Katniss fears the most during the games and all three she kills are Careers. There isn't much of an attempt to see them as nice people (or even just people). Theyproject arrogance and brutality (p.116) and they only team up with Peeta in order to exploit him (as evidenced in a conversation Katniss overhears).
The creation of the Career Tributes more or less sidesteps a lot of the grey morality that can arise out of the games. The Careers are pretty much the villains (Cato even kills one of his "mooks" for failure) and their simplicity just rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it's because I could actually see how deciding to train one tribute and have them volunteer is a valid strategy for a District - a mercy even. Two have to go every year, after all. I'm not trying to argue that the Careers are wholly altrustic individuals, but there has to be something more than just arrogance to children who've either decided or been taught from birth that glory is worth dying for. Or are people in the wealthier districts just complete amoral? Granted, the book is narrated by Katniss and empathy isn't exactly her strongest suit, so I'm understanding of the limitations, but I'm just not quite satisfied.
There is a very tangible sense of loss with each death in Battle Royale, something that is very absent in The Hunger Games. As the children die or are picked off, most of them aren't developed or described or even have names. Some (like the Career Tributes) are characterised only by being extremely unpleasant. The thing is, I never really wanted any of the other tributes to win (except maybe Peeta) the way I desperately wanted almost every single one of the students in Battle Royale to survive. I wanted the girls who were refusing to kill each other to make it out. I wanted the rebels who were plotting to take down the system to succeed in their plan and miraculously escape. I wanted that boy who has just snapped (telling himself that he is going to go to university) to make it out. I could go on. I read Battle Royale some time ago and though many of the exact details escape my mind right now, I remember with great clarity how very much I wanted them all to make it out (and of course they don't).
No, I need to look one step ahead of the game.
So as I slide out of the foliage and into the dawn night, I pause a second, giving the cameras time to lock on me. Then I cock my head slightly to the side and giving a knowing smile. There! Let them figure out what that means! (p.198-199)
Where The Hunger Games does shine, however, is in the performative aspects of the games. The circuses half of the old bread and circuses quote on the subjugation of the masses. That said, the book doesn't really explore or make that particularly evident. District 12, at least, is thoroughly undistracted from the truth of the matter, given their silent salute of thanks and admiration and goodbye to someone you love (p.29). Perhaps the Hunger Games are only supposed to distract the wealthier districts (especially the Capitol, which is sometimes synonymous with the audience Katniss is trying to impress) who get really into it and where real volunteers who've trained all their lives exist, but that doesn't work at all. The whole point of bread and circuses is that you're distracting the impoverished mass from their own poverty and oppression with pomp and splendour. Your rich comes pre-distracted by being rich and thus in favour of any system of that perpetuates the inequality. Your system simply doesn't work and certainly doesn't tap into that sweet nexus of political commentary if your masses refuse to be distracted.
After dinner, we watch the replay in the sitting room. I seem frilly and shallow, twirling and giggling in my dress, although the others assure me I am charming. Peeta actually is charming and then utterly winning as the boy in love. And there I am, blushing and confused, made beautiful by Cinna's [the stylist] hands, desirable by Peeta's confession, tragic by circumstance, and by all accounts, unforgettable. (p.166-7)
But I'll come back to larger themes, including performance and perception, in The Hunger Games after finishing the last third. Just quickly though, I really do like the way Katniss is constantly aware of how she is being perceived and performs to the audience. It strikes a cord perhaps because of the way I see it as playing on on the Male Gaze and how it is internalised in our society. It also plays on stereotypes versus inviduals and the reductive way we can view people. It works beautifully and honestly think (so far, at least) that it is the book's greatest strength and will indeed explore it further it in the last post.
So stepping back to around page fifty or so, Katniss had just been given a gold pin with a bird on it by Madge. A scene that I had waxed lyrical about previously. Shortly after being given it, Katniss studies the bird, which turns out to be a descendant of a jabberjay, a genetically altered bird that was supposed to spy on the private conversations and repeat them to the Capitol.
It took people a while to realize what was going on in the districts, how private conversations were being transmitted. Then, of course, the rebels fed the Capitol endless lies, and the joke was on it. So the centres were shut down and the birds were abandoned to die off in the wild. (p. 52)
But the birds (all male) instead bred with wild female mockingbirds to create the mockingjay, who live on and are very good mimics.
The story is very odd, partly because this triumph in the face of the Capitol is probably meant to be heartening or hopeful, but all I think is how very much it seems to weaken any attempt to explore how the Capitol is trying to sow hatred and suspicion among its population. Gale had previously talked about how the tribute system creates greater divides between the wealthy and the poor, and I had thought that would be among the central themes of the book. Yet when it feels like the narrative should be ramping up the feeling of hopelessnes - just as they're beginning their journey to the Capitol to face almost certain death - here an anecdote about how the rebels could turn a means of spying on them into a joke.
And I can't help but wonder how that even worked. It seems illogical. I suppose a surfeit of false information could cause them to abandon the scheme, but how many peope had to die from accidental tip offs and incriminated by lying before the plan paid off? I'm not really sure how it would work, really, though I suppose you can argue that the birds aren't very good at stealth and all they need to do was to talk loudly near them. And if there was no means of identifying who is talking in your recording, then it could potentially be feasible...
But I just can't help but feel the details just don't quite add up well enough and that the bit of heavy-handed symbolism with how a means of spying was turned into a joke just doesn't quite work.
Still there's something comforting about the little bird [on the gold pin]. It's like having a piece of my father with me, protecting me. (p.53)
Furthermore and more disappointly, the pin suddenly becomes a symbol of rebellion and Katniss' father. But crucially, not Madge. She simply isn't mentioned in conjunction with the pin again in any detail. That she gave Katniss the pin is a fact that is forgotten. Though the pin continues to be important (and worn by Katniss throughout), its associations are with the bird and Katniss' father and later, Rue's work in the orchard (where it repeated the signal that the work day is over to the workers).
I'm really very disappointed in how Madge disappears from the narrative. I discussed last time how much the scene in which she bids Katniss farewell moved me and it is frustrating in the extreme that she is almost never mentioned again (except for in conjunction with her father). Katniss spares her no fond thoughts and never reminisces about their time together in companionable silence.
I unclasp the pin and hold it to her. "Here, you take it. It has more meaning for you than me."
"Oh, no," says Rue, closing my fingers back over the pin. "I like to see it on you." (p.256)
Even in the scene when Katniss offers the pin to Rue, there is no mention of Madge or even Katniss' promise to wear it. It's just very, very frustrating.
Being out in the woods with Gale... sometimes I was actually happy.
I call him my friend, but in the last year it's seemed too casual a word for what Gale is to me. A pang of longing shots through my chest. (p.136)
Gale, on the other hand, actually features quite prominently in Katniss' reminiscences, along with her parents and her sister, Prim. Something makes me suspect he may in fact be featured fairly prominently in the sequels, but that sort of setup aside, their relationship is nicely matter of fact. Katniss thinks of what he would say to her and she remembers how they met. They have a good solid, unromantic bond of trust and partnership, though again, I'm vaguely aware that this will change, but I want to enjoy it as it is now. Early on, Katniss remarks that she is sometimes jealous of the girls that show him attention because Good hunting partners are hard to find (p.12) and I liked that.
I remembered his [Gale's] mother a woman whose swollen belly announced she was just days away from giving birth. (p.134)
I am increasingly frustrated by the portrayal of Katniss' parents (and mothers in general). Just to quickly note, in the last several hundred pages, there has been one more mother, though she only really has one line (quoted above). Her function in that scene is to be a dependent and to show Gale's desperation. She doesn't really get much of another mention, but given Gale needed to put his name forwards for the tessura five times a year (one for each family member) his circumstances certainly haven't improved much at all. He is said to have been either helping of single-handedly feeding his family (p.16). The impression one gets here isn't so much Adults Are Useless (as per the trope) but that mothers are useless.
Or monsters. Peeta's mother says to him before he leaves that maybe Districgt Twelve will finally have a winner (p.110), meaning Katniss. At least, she comes across as more than a dependant as she works at the bakery, but she portrayed as a deeply unpleasant parent figure. A statement like that could be seen as part of a very pragmatic character, possibly even someone who had lost friends to the tribute before and is wary of being overly attached to her own children. But instead, she is simply unmotherly.
Katniss' mother is apparantly famed enough as a poor man's doctor that burn victims are sometimes taken to her, sometimes when the district doctor turns them away for being hopeless cases. She is unsqueamish and capable, but she doesn't quite shine the way Katniss' father does. It is clear Katniss adored her father and that relationship taught her the skills to survive. It is also apparently on his reputation and friendships that Katniss trades after his death (or so she assumes, attributing the occassional generosity of the merchants to their long-standing relationship with my father (p.111) but Peeta does say various things that call that into question, though attributing it to pity or Katniss' personal magnetism appeal to me less than her just being competent and occasionally getting a raw deal). Her father isn't just a provider, though, he also sings with a beatiful voice that the mockingjays love to mimic (p.50). In the end, it is Rue who tells Katniss about the healing leaves that can draw out poison. Arguably, Katniss didn't learn as much from her mother as she did her father because she is squeamish about injuries (but not killing or gutting animals). Prim, on the other hand, stays and helps their mother, and it's strongly implied that she's inherit the skills.
My mother had a book she'd brough with her from the apothecary shop. The pages were made of old parchment and covered in ink drawings of plants. Neat handwritten blocks told their names, wher to gather them, when they came in bloom, their medical uses. But my father added other entries to the book. Plants for eating, not healing. Dandelions, pokeweed, wild onions. (p.61)
Again, despite it being her mother's book, it is her father's additions that feed them. Of course, her mother is too depressed to give them the book, but she does rouse for long enough to cook the food Katniss brought back (though not to eat it, they have to coax her aftewards).
Other details about Katniss' mother reflect her once wealthier past, such as how she adores coffee, which we could never afford (p.67) and the motif of the blue dress and matching shoes which she gives her daughter. Peeta's father is also said to know her back when they were kids and mentions her often, though Katniss' mother doesn't except to compliment his bread (p.103). Katniss does think of her mother and sister often, and worry that the former might slip into depression again at her death. In some ways, there is something very poignant, quite well written there, but I have trouble seeing it through the thick, thick sludge from the tropes.
Something happened when I was holding Rue's hand, watching the life drain out of her. Now I am determined to avenge her, to make her loss unforgetable, and I can only do that by winning and thereby making myself unforgettable. (p.293)
Rue comes across as too much of an overt attempt at getting under my skin to fully work as character for me. She is small and vulnerable, and her death is a turning point for Katniss. I can't help but feel that she is more more important as symbol than as a character, serving very much the same function as Primrose, to whom she is repeatedly compared to. I wanted her to be more complex than simply playing the role of the innocent, struggling to survive, trusting Katniss and finally being killed.
I have misjudged him [Peeta]. I think of his actions since the reaping began. The friendly squeeze of my hand. His father showing up with cookies and promising to feed Prim... did Peeta put him up to that? His tears at the station. Volunteering to wash Haymitch but challenging him in the mornning when apparently the nice-guy approach had failed. And now the waving at the window, already trying to win the crowd. (p.73)
Peeta is really the only character aside from Katniss who really stands out for me, with his professed love for her and the constant question of what his true motivations are. He is probably the only character that Katniss cannot make her mind up about, repeatedly revising her opinion of him. She first thinks he's kind, later that he is manipulative. He lies to cover for her, but she wonders when else he may be lying. She wonders at his tactics and so on and forth.
Given the incident with the bread and how he probably saved her life by turning on Cato, I have my suspicions of how it'll turn out, but tension was palpable for most of the book. Her relationship with Peeta is the only real way one sees the impossibility of friendship (which I'm still not quite sure how she overcame with Rue). Haymitch forces them into talking and appearing friendly in public and later there is the question of him confessing his feelings at the interview and gaining the nickname Lover Boy from the Careers. The uncertainty between them adds quite a lot to the book.
Returning to the issue of the setting and bread and circuses, everything just doesn't quite fit together well enough. Collins has managed fit herself in that annoying space of too much delineation - not detail, mind, the problem isn't in detail as much as it is in the fact that you need grey spaces to allow the reader to string your setting together. The trick is generally in not giving hard numbers for anything because that is almost always incriminating. There are, for example, only thousands of slips at the reaping of District 12. Perhaps it's just that Katniss is terrible at estimating large numbers but all the children of District 12 fit into one space without too much trouble so it just doesn't add up at all, given what the metropolis that is the Capitol and District 12 being the only source of power (through coal mining). I suppose in theory there might be some wind farms or something in District Engineering (3 maybe? That has factories) to make up for the obvious shortfall in energy. There could in theory be some secret slaves district somewhere? Or that the coal miners are kept due to tradition rather than any actual need for them? I keep coming back to fact that technological splendour of the Capitol where there are machines that can untangle your hair for you (with an electric current) just doesn't quite fit with the need for coal.
But we don't mine graphite in District 12. That was part of District 13's job until they were destroyed. (p.91)
"So, I'll be in a coal miner's outfit?" [...]
"Not exactly. You see, Portia and I think that coal miner thing's very overdone. No one will remember you in that. And we both see it as our job to make the District Twelve tributes unforgetable. [...] So rather thank focus on the coat mining itself, we're going to focus on the coal," says Cinna. (p.81)
It's even more baffling in that that there are only 12 Districts as Twelve doesn't appear to mine anything beyond coal (how do you avoid mining graphite?). I suppose the setting might not have moved to other fuels and therefore need the coal (though see above on that), but there is simply no mention of anything else being mined. I suppose it would be strange to have all those seams conveniently located near one another, but surely the country needs what it needs. I suppose they might simply be reusing a large quantity of resources from before the apocalypse (stray thought: a futuristic setting where they mine landfills would be amazing) and coal is the one that isn't just lying around. But this really doesn't get around the fact that the district has far, far too small a population to serve its stated function.
But there are two more books and dystopic settings are nothing if not about delving into the secrets and conspiracies behind the scenes, so it can all still make sense. Or at least, more sense.
The 12 Districts system could work, as long as Collins never alludes to the population size beyond saying it's very, very big (and not have them all fit into one square). District 12 comes across as a town or a village rather than an enormous mining operation that fuels an entire country with a stunning capital full of fantastical frippery. I do love the description of the Capitol as this completely over the top place of bright and brilliant colours. It comes across and stunning and vivid and counter to the stark black-and-red dystopic cover the book has. I suppose it's also nice because my previous experience with dystopias has been largely monochromatic: pristine, futuristic white or gritty, dirty browns and greys.
If anything, they have not quite captured the magnificence of the glistening buildings in a rainbow of hues, that tower inito the air, the shiny ars that roll down the wide paved streets, the oddly dressed people with bizarre hair and painted faces who have never missed a meal. All the colours seem artificial, the pinks too deep, the greeds too bright, the yellows painful to the eye, like the flat round discs of hard candy we can never afford to buy at the tiny sweet shop in District 12. (p.72)
I also like the fashions being described and it's why I'm beginning to look forward to the "major motion picture" that the cover boasts of it soon becoming. The asethetics of the Captiol is vivid and very striking. Aside from the bright colours, in hair and clothes, there's also a fashion for dying your skin: Octavis, a woman whose entire body has been dyed a shade of pea green (p.75).
That said, Collins seems to have a bizarre aversion to describing certain aspects of her setting. More specifically, Katniss never gives any detail on her school life. I sometimes wonder if this is why Madge never gets much of a mention because that's where Katniss knows her from.
Almost all of Katniss' memories are to do with her time in the woods, trading at the black market or at home. There is no detail of what school is like or even how many hours it takes up in her day. There is nothing about her teachers, what is taught (presumably propaganda) or how this may be shaping her as a person. The void is just strange to me and it creates an odd blank spot to the character of Katniss. Most of the time I actually forget she went to school at all (since she appears to have few formative memories from there). The lack is particularly odd because Collins didn't have to have it such that the children of the Districts attended school regularly or at all. Did she feel that any greater detail that was different from what school is like for the reader would alienate them?
And in theory the system should be different. Katniss expresses surprise that the children of the agricultural district (11) get time off at harvest so that they can help. That is the very origin of school holidays. It's why terms are divided the way they are. I'm almost wondering if the schooldays are organised differently in the world of the Hunger Games and how that works.
Also, there's something going on with rebels and traitors being punished by having their tongues cut out and being reduced to slaves (or servants?) in the Capitol, but there's not much to say about it other than it's there, it's mysterious (and seemingly illogical) and probably set up for something in a later book.
And I think that's is. See you in another couple of hundred pages.
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