Book Review: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Final Opinion: Didn't like it. 6/10

Recently, I've been really into science fiction. Sleek spaceships, awesome technology, post-apocalyptic futures, and genetic engineering. What more can a girl ask for? Which is why I decided to look into The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. I've been hearing rave reviews about this book for the past two years, as well as reading news about the upcoming film, so I decided to jump onto the band wagon and dive into the series as well. My roommate loved it (but then again she loved Twilight too) so I gave this book a go while on a flight to New York, and was in for a bit of disappointment. Sure, it was suspenseful and would make for a great action film, but it was a little bit lacking in the character development area. The main female lead, Katniss, is a bit too contrived and unnatural for my taste, and the author doesn't nearly torture her enough. Also, the novel doesn't fulfill its full dramatic potential and is often anti-climatic.

Anywhoo... The novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where North America has become a nation called Panem (reminds me of that new TV show starring Christina Ricci). Panem is divided into The Capitol and twelve impoverished districts, and people from the districts are considered second-class citizens. Each district is forced each year to send a tribute of one girl and one boy between the ages of 12-18 to The Capitol, where the they take part in the Hunger Games and fight each other to the death as part of a reality TV show. The main character, Katniss, is from District 12, where she must scrape out a living poaching animals in the woods so that her family, consisting of her mother and younger sister, may have enough to eat. Her younger sister ends up getting picked as a tribute, but Katniss volunteers to go in her stead. The male tribute is named Peeta, and Katniss eventually develops a romantic relationship with him as the novel progresses.

One of the main flaws of the novel is that Katniss pretty much has no weaknesses from the get-go. She is characterized as a sullen, fiery, sharp, clever, and rebellious young woman (which are considered generally admirable traits in today's society). Though she has had no prior experience as a reality TV star, she is still able to fall seamlessly into the role. Sure, she acknowledges that she is nervous and has no clue what to say or how to act in the scenes where she is in front of an audience (by audience, I am talking about the characters watching the Hunger Games, not the readers), yet she is still somehow able to pull out of her ass the exact right thing to say and the exact right way to act and charm everyone. I suppose this is supposed to illustrate her strong desire for survival and keen instinct, but what bothers me is that there is no precedent for this. Where in the world did she acquire the emotional capability and experience to manipulate the audience? She has quite the sophisticated knowledge on what it takes to convince the audience that her love-act with Peeta is real, as shown in the cave scene where she devises an emotionally-charged moment with Peeta when she convinces him to divulge what made him fall in love with her in the first place.  Her expertise in handling emotions and feelings makes no sense to me, because from what we know about her thus far, she has spent the majority of her time in the woods hunting and providing for her family, and hasn't had much time to socialize with people other than to bargain for food. Not to mention, though she can be quite sharp in terms of survival instinct and picking up subtle cues from her mentor Haymitch, she is quite the dullard in the face of Peeta's obvious romantic affections. Which is why I don't find it convincing at all that she is somehow able to capture exactly the subtle emotions required of her to feign a romantic relationship with Peeta and convince the audience that her seemingly-rebellious actions were a result of her intense passion for him. Of course, this can be explained away by the possibility that Katniss might truly be in love with Peeta, but just hasn't realized it yet, but it doesn't explain how she can be so articulate and poetic about her emotions. For someone with minimal social experience, Katniss is still able to maneuver herself in front of an audience like a seasoned socialite. Plus, she credits knowing how to act with Peeta from watching how her father and mother acted together, which seems kind of a flimsy excuse to me. Also, kind of gross. I don't like thinking about parental PDA, and Katniss made out with Peeta a lot, which means she totally saw her parents doing that too. I was surprised when they didn't end up having sex in that cave.

Also, even though Katniss is so good at manipulating the emotions of others, readers know very little about her own emotions. She feels angry, sad, happy, confused, conflicted, whatever. Her feelings are never gone into in great depth, which adds to the impression of her as a mostly stagnant character. She doesn't really come out of her harrowing experience as a different person, nor does she realize something new about herself other than the possibility that Gale may be more than just a friend to her, nor does she overcome an inner flaw. This book is about a sixteen-year old girl who undergoes a traumatizing experience, so I expect her to be a little more traumatized. I felt that this book could have had the potential to be a little deeper and more meaningful if it had been more of a coming-of-age novel about a girl who overcomes great difficulties both inwardly and outwardly, and grows a little more as a character. But this book is purely action, and I suppose it makes for a good read if you're bored.

Additionally, as I mentioned earlier, I felt that Katniss wasn't tortured nearly enough. Yeah, she had to kill other kiddies her own age and see people she cared about injured and/or killed, but the author could have fleshed it out a little more. Some famous author once said (I forgot who, and I'm paraphrasing) that to write a good book and really develop a character, you have to put him/her in a lot of undesirable situations and make him/her suffer as much as possible. Katniss had the potential to do a lot more suffering than she did. First of all, this book built up a lot on how Katniss would eventually have to face the dramatic decision killing a friend in order to avoid being killed herself. I expected this to happen with Rue and Thresh. I felt the author was heavily foreshadowing a point in the novel where emotions would be stretched to the breaking point as Katniss is forced to make a painful choice. Yet this pretty much never happens. Rue and Thresh get anti-climatically killed off by other characters. I felt that had the author placed Katniss in a situation where she had to decide between killing Rue or being killed herself, it really would have fleshed her out as a character. But alas, the author takes the easy way out and avoids having to write such a heavy confrontation by getting Rue suddenly and abruptly killed off. This also happens with Thresh, who miraculously spares Katniss's life on account of Rue. This part of the novel made me wonder if Katniss would do the same for Thresh, and I kept reading expectantly to see if such a situation would arise. But nope. Disappointed again. Thresh gets killed off by Cato, the main bad guy. Also, I felt that Peeta's death was foreshadowed several times in the novel, especially at the end where Katniss gets an uneasy feeling about Peeta. But he survives to get his heart broken by Katniss. I don't really care though, because I don't like Peeta much either. He pretty much serves as dead weight that Katniss has to drag around and keep alive. I wish she killed him, though it makes sense why she didn't, so I'm not going to complain about that.

Overall, this book was so-so. I guess that popularity of this series mainly lies in the novelty of having little kiddies killing each other in a reality TV show (which really isn't all that novel if you've heard of Battle Royale). The few things I liked about this book were the Jabber jays and the mutant wolf-humans. Pretty neat and creepy. Also, this book really reminded me a lot of the Roman gladiatorial games, especially since many of the characters had Roman names, such as Cato, Coriolanus, Caesar, Plutarch, Cinna, Octavia, etc. The contestants are a lot like Roman gladiators, in that many of them are forced into the games, have to fight to the death, and the victors are showered with wealth. However, the author herself has said that she was mainly influenced by the Greeks and the story of Theseus, so I might just be imagining things. I don't really see much of a connection to Theseus, but whatever. I'm not going to go into that since this book review is already long enough. But to sum it up, I didn't like this book because the characters were shallowly developed, and the main character exhibited very little growth and change. It is a good read if you are looking for action and suspense, though it is frequently anti-climatic. I won't be coming back for the second and third books.