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raethereviewer 's review for:
The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
This was my first time rereading The Hunger Games in the over ten years since I first read it. Reading this again as an adult, there were some things I didn’t notice or think about the first time. The writing still holds up incredibly well, all these years later. It’s a YA novel with a teen protagonist who reads like a teenager. The pacing is excellent. I finished it in two days and only paused because of the necessity of sleep. It was so easy to be sucked back into the storyline. Katniss continues to be such a compelling protagonist. She’s imperfect in a way that makes her real. Her motivations are ones we can respect. Her evolving understanding of the world shows her character growth by the end as a stark difference to the person she was at the start of the novel.
There were some issues around the representation of disability and race that are so much more noticeable for me now that I’ve lived and learnt so much more since being 12-years-old. Some of the ways she described disabled people weren’t great (“The crippled boy from 10” (p. 125-126) “There’s a little girl… She’s not quite right, but she’s treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things” (pg. 204-205)). Then there’s also the case of Peeta’s disability, which I think is handled well enough at the end of the novel but I’ll have to reread Catching Fire and Mockingjay to get a solid opinion on that.
In terms of race, District 11 is very likely inspired by the history of sharecropping and has always read as a “Black district.” The songs they sing sound like Negro Spirituals and Rue literally talks about people being whipped if they took any of the harvest home. Thresh is compared to an ox and described as huge in a way that is dehumanizing. This same language doesn’t seem to be applied to Cato, even though he’s a Career tribute who is well fed and presumably large, as well. Thresh is the only male character that I can think of who is explicitly described as Black so this kind of language feels particularly harmful, even unintentionally. Rue’s representation is a stark contrast to this and I like that Katniss compares her to Prim. I remember the weird internet backlash this got when the movies came out, but seeing a little Black girl who wasn’t adultified meant so much to me when I read this as a kid and it continued to be one of the best parts of the novel for me.
I think Suzanne Collins was trying to be inclusive but this was a book written by a white woman in 2008. Sensitivity readers weren’t a thing and publishers weren’t even pretending to care about diversity yet (especially pre-The Hate U Give). This isn’t to absolve her of this, but an acknowledgment that it happened within the context of the early-2000s.
Overall, I’m happy I reread this and I’m genuinely excited to continue the series. It was so influential to my middle school years and now it feels like an inspiration for my own creative writing.
There were some issues around the representation of disability and race that are so much more noticeable for me now that I’ve lived and learnt so much more since being 12-years-old. Some of the ways she described disabled people weren’t great (“The crippled boy from 10” (p. 125-126) “There’s a little girl… She’s not quite right, but she’s treated as a sort of pet. People toss her scraps and things” (pg. 204-205)). Then there’s also the case of Peeta’s disability, which I think is handled well enough at the end of the novel but I’ll have to reread Catching Fire and Mockingjay to get a solid opinion on that.
In terms of race, District 11 is very likely inspired by the history of sharecropping and has always read as a “Black district.” The songs they sing sound like Negro Spirituals and Rue literally talks about people being whipped if they took any of the harvest home. Thresh is compared to an ox and described as huge in a way that is dehumanizing. This same language doesn’t seem to be applied to Cato, even though he’s a Career tribute who is well fed and presumably large, as well. Thresh is the only male character that I can think of who is explicitly described as Black so this kind of language feels particularly harmful, even unintentionally. Rue’s representation is a stark contrast to this and I like that Katniss compares her to Prim. I remember the weird internet backlash this got when the movies came out, but seeing a little Black girl who wasn’t adultified meant so much to me when I read this as a kid and it continued to be one of the best parts of the novel for me.
I think Suzanne Collins was trying to be inclusive but this was a book written by a white woman in 2008. Sensitivity readers weren’t a thing and publishers weren’t even pretending to care about diversity yet (especially pre-The Hate U Give). This isn’t to absolve her of this, but an acknowledgment that it happened within the context of the early-2000s.
Overall, I’m happy I reread this and I’m genuinely excited to continue the series. It was so influential to my middle school years and now it feels like an inspiration for my own creative writing.