First Fifty Pages: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Trigger Warning: Violence, (no great detail). Corporal Punishment. Death of Parent. Depression.
(Also, am new to the trigger warning system, so sorry if I've left out anything. Do tell me in the comments.)


Preamble:
I confess that I am hugely fond of Battle Royale, both the film (2000, written by Kenta Fukasaku) and the book (by Koushun Takami, translated by Yuji Oniki), so my first response to the Hunger Games was that it was an Americans make on a very similar idea. Admittedly, games in which contestants fight to the death for a bloodthirsty audience is a trope as old as Rome (and for children being tribute, older, with Theseus' tale the obvious point of comparison, itself being Collins' stated inspiration), so it's not that I would frown on the idea of a fresh take on the subject.

Given my fondness and admiration for Battle Royale, I was reluctant to pick up the Hunger Games. I wasn't sure if Collins could really bring more to the table when it came to psychological insight into how a dictatorial regime could control its population through creating a world of fear and suspicion. The thing is, once I caught myself being dismissive of the Hunger Games, I was more or less honour bound to read them.

So that all said, I'm probably not the most neutral observer on the planet. Do bear that in mind.


The First Fifty Pages...
In the first fifty pages, the basic setup of the book has occured: the Hunger Games (as is the rest of the setting) are introduced, Primrose is selected and Katniss volunteers. The second tribute (male) from her District is picked, they both say their goodbyes and they get on a train. The writing is brisk, direct and evocative.

So far, what struck me the most is how much less subtle The Hunger Games is as book. Katniss is blunt and self aware as a narrator, which makes her really quite endearing a trait (especially compared to the Twilight's much more unpleasant and oblivious Bella) but her bluntness and her certainty with how the world works around her takes a lot out of the situation. In Battle Royale, it is never made explicit why the games are held or exactly how they came about. It's profound effect on the population and how it is used to control all comes much later in the story and is handled with a much greater deftness. Katniss' simple stating of why the games are as they are is an anvil to the face.


Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. "Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you life a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen." (p.22)

Perhaps if the protagonist was more taken in by the pageantry and the fiction of the games and the truth is more slowly revealed then there may be a greater degree of subtlety, but Katniss does not allow for a second of doubt that the games are a means of goverment control and that any pride and prestige associated is merely a fascade to mask the horror of the games. She also fears the contestants from wealthier districts who have been specifically been training for the games, where the prestige of winning outweighs the posibility of dying.

How completely Katniss and her friend Gale seems to have escaped the conditioning of her society is almost strange and I'm not entirely sure it sits well with me. She is characterised as always having questioned the justice in her, frequently speaking her mind and having to learn to restrain these instincts. That she appears to be simply born free-thinking sits awkwardly with me, and in stark contrast to Battle Royale, where the revolutionary uncle and scraps of rumours form the beginning of the various young protagonists questions about the society around them. Admittedly, Katniss is hardened from a young age, struggling with poverty and the schoolchildren of Battle Royale are meant to be relatively sheltered. With the latter, it's very much about the shock of the games shattering their perfect illusions.


"... And you've had more practice [at hunging]. Real practice," he says. "You know how to kill.""Not people," I say.
"How different can it be, really?" says Gale grimly.
The awful thing is that if I forget they're people, it will be no different at all. (p.48)

I have faulted books before for hiding all their depth in their final pages, but still, there feels to be a fundamental lack of subtlety to the narrative. That it comes out and states the dehumanising nature of the games within the first fifty pages simply doesn't seem leave much room for further insight. The above conversation, for example, feels the need to add that one more line. Whereas Battle Royale shows how each of the children break down and are forced through the circumstance and suspicion to kill, often taking you step by step through the logic of survival, without ever quite stating outright the fundamental dehumanising nature of it.

All this isn't to say Battle Royale is perfect, it is itself very flawed as construct and especially in its various prejudices and its handling of gender. In some ways, I had hoped Collins to do significantly better as her book does have a female protagonist.

And as said, Katniss is a pleasure to read. She is aware of her faults but bluntly unapologetic. She comes across as pragmatic and wonderfully human, especially in the anecdote in which she states how she killed and skinned a lynx that came to follow her around (that she was admittedly growing fond of). Her uneasy truce with the family cat is equally good.


Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me. Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love. (p.4)

Her basic competence sets her apart from many, many heroines and a genuinely root for her. She is also in control of her outward emotions and from the moment she wins, she works to mask them and begin planning her manipulation of the game. I am vaguely aware from various bits of summaries I've read material that her interactions with the crowds and her winning their favour will be the bulk of the book (ala Gladiator and other stories of spectator bloodsports?) but it hasn't taken the fore yet.

I do also deeply admire her for her thought process and her tactical awareness, which is in stark contrast to her male counterpart Peeta Mellark, the baker's son, who is shown as having been obviously crying. That he is shown to be a soggy mess and her in complete control of her expression is really very good (and certainly better in that regard than Battle Royale where I seen to recall the only girl not to have a complete breakdown was the sociopath. That said, the boys were also really very vulnerable in that).

That Katniss comes to the story already mature and competent makes me fear that the rest of the book is only going to be of her making mistakes and her undermining her own awesomeness. Like Bella of Twilight, who seems to regress from a teenager who looks after her mother or Annabeth of the Camp Halfblood Chronicles who goes from being established as one of the most competent to a damsel to be rescued (the same can be said of almost every other female characters in the series, including the goddess Artemis herself and her immortal lead Huntress, Zoe Nightshade).

Other female characters, however, do not fare as well as Katniss. I had noted in the first five pages, we were introduced to Katniss, her sister Primrose, her mother and her father. And in those five pages, her sister is characterized as lovely as primrose, for which she was named and her mother as very beautiful once (p.3). Her father (now dead) is characterised as someone who made bows and taught her how to hunt and circumvent the rules.

Katniss herself is, of course, tough as nails. But it's not hard to see how the above introduction appears problematic on a gender front. Admittedly, it is one of my pet peeves. The recurring theme of beautiful (but useless) mothers and fathers who are inspiration for why their daughters defy authority. Exactly why it provokes such irritation is perhaps best left for another post where the trope can be fully deconstructed, but suffice to say I find it very problematic.

The familial dynamic as described doesn't really change, though more details are filled in. Primrose is sunlight incarnate. She is innocent and adorable. She can't bear the thought of killing animals and keeps a goat. Katniss, of course, adores her and it is because of Primrose that she volunteers. Primrose is almost too perfect. Though the quack passage is adorable (p.18).


People deal with me, but they are genuinely fond of Prim. Maybe there will be enough fondness to keep her alive. (p.46)

And whilst you can argue that her alleged prefection is what prompts such devotion from her sister, it does have the unpleasant side effect of making her more a symbol than a character.


"You can't clock out and leave Prim on her own. There's no me to keep you both alive... You have to promise me you'll fight through it!" My voice has risen to a shout. In it is all the anger, all the fear I felt at her abandonment.
She pulls her arm from my grasp, moved to anger herself now. "I was ill. I could have treated myself if I had the medicine I have now."
The part about her being ill might be true. I've seen her bring back people suffering from immobilizing sadness since. Perhaps it is a sickness, but it's one we can't afford. (p.43)

Katniss is not particularly sympathetic of her almost catatonically depressed mother and I can understand that. After her father died (in a mining accident), she had to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of her family, stepping into the void that her mother could not fill. As her mother (who came from a rich family, married for love) became debilitatingly depressed, locked in some dark world of sadness (p.32). She is unable move from the house, let alone find work.

Her mother eventually recovers enough to operate an apothecary, but I'm uncomfortable with Katniss' skepticism at her mother's illness. Given how certain she is about everything else, especially the injustices of the system, the book doesn't come across as one that is particularly nuanced at the moment. Equally I'm not entirely sure what to make of the efficacy of herbal antidepressants in this setting, but I digress.

It is stated that since Katniss was twelve, her mother has been unable to feed them and Katniss has had to enter her name three times into the reaping ballot each year in exchange for food. Her mother's recovery and consequent job has apparently not had any impact on this. It's unclear exactly how long she spent incapacitated, but it wasn't so long that she hasn't had the chance to cure people since. She is an apothecary. Though she may only be serving the poor, I'm not really sure why the family can't make ends meet that way (or at least not need the extra grain enough to risk a greater chance of Katniss being chosen). Is it because she has to rely on her daughter to gather her herbs? Or is it because she's very bad at running it as a business as opposed to altrustically? Does she just have terrible competition against other apothecaries who don't don't rely entirely on their daughters for herbs? Or is this because she's not a man and only fathers are allowed to be successful breadwinners of the family?

Growing up before your time is an important theme in Young Adult literature and it is certainly part and parcel of the genre to have incompetent parents. Yet it this stark portrayal of a mother with dead eyes (p.34) and a dead father leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

Why is it that in this impoverished setting that the man is the breadwinner of the family? Surely it make more sense for all members of the family to be working in their own way much like they did throughout history (with the abberation of the 1950s - though admittedly at the Mellark bakery the whole family helps out). Why is the father idealised and the source of all the skills that will no doubt later save Katniss? Why does her one touching scene with her mother center around a blue dress with matching shoes? Why is it that strong female characters have to be sanctioned of a male father figure?

In fact, I daresay there's a distinct trend of nice men in the first fifty pages and unnice women. I had at first only noticed it of the two sets of parents. Peeta's father being characterised as far nicer than his witch of a a wife (p.45). He is silent, but often does trades in their favour. His wife, on the other hand, is angry and without sympathy for Katniss and her family. She is the one who shouts at Katniss for lurking around her bins and she beats her son, Peeta, for burning bread.


Because of the bread, because of the red weal that stood out on his cheekbone. What had she hit him with? My parents never hit us. I couldn't even imagine it. (p.37)

And this is not a setting where corporal punishment is acceptable. She's just deeply unpleasant in contrast to her steady, soft-hearted husband who comes to give Katniss cookies on her departure and promises to make sure her sister eats right.

This extends to Effie Trinket, the manically upbeat woman who arrives once a year to read out the names at the reaping (p.9) and well-meaning mayor, father of Madge, Katniss' friend. Effie is described as false, characterised by her constantly off-centred pink wig and her gushing endorsement of the games. She is the embodiment of the lie that Capitol tell of the games being about glory and honour. The mayor, on the other hand, is portrayed as a man trapped. He has a pained expression on his face (p.27) at recognising Katniss and he is shown as wearied by the pretence.


"Look at her. Look at this one [...] I like her [...] Lots of..." He can't think of the word for a while. "Spunk!" he says triumphantly. "More than you!" He releases me and starts for the front of the stage. "more than you!" he shouts, pointing directly into a camera.
Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? (p.29)

Also perhaps worth a brief mention is Haymitch, District 12's only still living winner of the games (and note how Collins feels the need to have Katniss explain the two possibly meanings of the taunt). He is incredibly drunk and I'm willing to bet there is more to him than meets the eye. He also tries to drunkenly give Effie Trinket a big hug, which she barely manages to fend off (p.23). It's not a huge deal, but the detail is framed with She goes on a bit about what an honour it is to be here, although everyone knows she's just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation (p.23).

As said, not a huge deal, but it sits uncomfortably in my mind. Her displeasure at being molested by a drunk is mentioned in the same breath as her insincerity in her declaration of love for the district.

I've raised a lot of things I've found problematic with the first fifty pages, but I am also genuinely enjoying the book. The writing is immediate and the strength of Katniss does forgive a lot. The premise is intriguing, though the existence of the sequels and a vague feeling of Protagonist Armour does take out some of the immediate tension (which incidentally, Battle Royale subverts very well through the use of a Decoy Protagonist). The writing is fast paced and though some details do sit wrong in my mind (see the pedantry post) it is overall extremely evocative and there is a sense of verisimilitude.

I do particularly like Madge, the mayor's daughter. Katniss is far more forgiving of her sort-of friend and the moment in which she explains how the girl bears the brunt of Gale's misdirected anger for a making what I'm sure she thought was a harmless comment (p.16) is surprisingly poigant. Though again, Collins resorts to explaining the underlying manipulations of the state outright as opposed to letting the situation speak for itself. Equally, though, it is to reflect how much more politically aware the protagonists are in this book, with their angry rants in the woods about the fundamental unfairness of the system and how it keeps you down, compared to the scared schoolchildren of Battle Royale .

But it is the relationship between Katniss and Madge that I like. The latter is first described as all right and surprisingly not a snob for being the mayor's daughter:


She just keeps to herself. Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends, we just seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at assemblies, partnering for sports activities. We rarely talk, which suits us both just fine. (p.14)

Later, after Katniss has been chosen, an urgent but not tearful Madge shows up with the circular gold pin with a small bird in flight which is featured on most of the cover art. The brief scene is really very poignant and almost understated. I find it a lot more moving than the sequence with Peeta and the burnt bread which felt far more overwrought.


"Promise you'll wear it into the arena, Katniss?" she asks. "Promise?"
"Yes," I say. Cookies. A pin. I'm getting all kinds of gifts today. Madge give me one more. A kiss on the cheek. Then she's gone and I'm left thinking that maybe Madge really has been my friend all along. (p.46)

I just really like the sense of having fallen into a friendship and being surprised by it. It certainly reads in rather stark contrast to Bella's relationships with her female friends (I should probably cut down on the references to Twilight, but I follow Ana Mardoll's deconstruction and it's the other big Young Adult book that's getting a film series) and Mortal Instruments' Clary's lack thereof. Or even Deryn from Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan series. There's always an economy of characters to worry about (even in books where the limitation is more wordcount and reader patience, but the same principles apply forcing an author to be economical), so I'm not faulting all authors everywhere for failing to provide their characters with such friendships but all in all it's just a rather nice touch.

I should probably finish with talking about Peeta Mellark and his kindess with burnt loaves, but I have a funny feeling I'll have cause to talk about him later (due to him being a contestant) and the unresolved tension between Katniss feeling as though she owes him for it will no doubt come a head.

See you in another hundred odd pages.