About Those Books

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So ... about The Hunger Games.

Like just about every person on the planet (or at least all those on Facebook), I've seen a lot of hype about The Hunger Games. A lot of my friends went and saw the movie. Most of them loved it. But I read some reviews that were bothersome to me, and I had to add my two cents. (This is a big step for me, because it's probably the first controversial topic I've taken on in this venue. Bear with me.)

The biggest complaint people seem to have with it is that The Hunger Games is "about teenagers killing each other." And yes—that is in the movie. And the books. By all means, if you don't want to watch a movie or read a book with violence in it, don't read The Hunger Games. Don't watch it. You should watch and read what you feel good about, and often even the best stories can be tainted by "that one bad part." I'm with you there.

But whether you choose to go see the movie is neither here nor there. The thing that really bothers me—the part that got under my skin so much as to throw me into a full G-Chat rant to Ryan while he tried to do his schoolwork—is when people say violence is what The Hunger Games is about.


What's in a book and what a book is about are two very different things. Anyone who's taken any course in literature knows that. Cinderella has child abuse, a broken family and a lot of vermin. But is it about those things? No. It's about overcoming your circumstances and the odds and making something of yourself.

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If a book were defined simply by the elements it contains, most (if not all) of the books we call classics would not only be inappropriate, but worthless. If a book were nothing more than the sum of its parts:

To Kill a Mockingbird is about (alleged) rape.
Fahrenheit 451 is about arson.
Harry Potter is about witchcraft.
The Scarlet Letter is about adultery.
A Separate Peace is about murder.

You get my gist. A book is about so much more than its events. There are themes. Lessons to learn. Characters we can see the best and worst of ourselves in. You have to read a book to see what the author is trying to say, not simply to be entertained. I think what Suzanne Collins was trying to say is that when a government gets too powerful, they can do bad things. She's saying that America's obsession with watching other peoples' misfortune from the comfort of our living rooms is sadistic and dangerous. And as a side note, she didn't just dream up the violence out of nothing. Think ancient Rome. Gladiators.

Suzanne Collins was making a social commentary by pointing out the worst in human nature, not celebrating it. One of my friends said it perfectly in his GoodReads review of the first book:

"I'm glad there are more books in the series because I would like to see her address the underlying issues and not leave it as just a story of kids killing other kids."

And that's what she does.

If you don't want to read about or see violence, these books are not for you. Neither is the movie. But please, give the author and those who love the books a little credit by realizing violence isn't really what they're all about.