The Hunger Games Part II

As I read the second portion of The Hunger Games, I couldn't help be feel all sorts of emotions. I was angry, upset, surprised, anxious, devastated, and nervous. As we follow Katniss and the other tributes through this difficult journey, we have to remember that they are doing this for pure entertainment. People are watching them as they are fighting for their lives. And they're fighting to have food sent to their District so the people they love can avoid starvation.

This made me think that maybe The Hunger Games are not so disconnected from modern day society after all. Sure, the book is pure fiction, but I don't think it is too far fetched to say that there are some connections to be made to the way society is constructed now.

People are starving all over The United States of America, and even worse in other parts of the world. The people that are starving are the ones at the very bottom of society - the sick, injured, disabled, the laborers, the people holding the jobs others don't want to have, the people just working to get by and support themselves and their families. Then, there are the people at the top of society, the 1%. These are the CEOs and large business owners, the people who inherited huge lump sums of old money from past family members, the people who are sitting pretty in their mansions without a care in the world. Of course, these are generalizations and I cannot claim that all people that fit into these economic categories are all the exact same. However, for these purposes, they are very different groups of people. The rich and the poor. The rich flaunt their money and extravagant life styles while the poor are just hoping to make it to tomorrow.

In The Hunger Games, the rich make a spectacle of the poor by watching the games. They think of it as great entertainment. They are desensitized to the death of these innocent people because they know their fate will not affect them at all. Just like some of the richest people on earth could care less about a homeless man begging on the street because they know his life doesn't affect theirs.

People are not united, they are separated and made out to be opponents. Sometimes, even the biggest enemies can come together for the common good, like Katniss and Rue, but there will still always be people out there against them. Why does this cruelty exist in this story and in the real world?