Something that bugs me about Hunger Games

[VanBuren]

LOL this forum likes to argue about everything, doesn't it? And here we actually have ppl arguing over what I suppose is the literary worth of this novel series. Jesus.

Just accept that this novel series is not that good. And then say, "But I like it, it's mental popcorn. So screw off." That's a valid position to take.

Was gonna elaborate on the Battle Royale thing. But... nah. And yes Snoopy13, I've read every single one of those other stories you have mentioned. Though I'm not sure to which Shakespearean play THG is supposed to be linked to or inspired by. Maybe that one I haven't read.

I can't speak for anyone else, but when people say that I have a tendency to cling even harder to my position.

[snoopy13a]

I'd expect they would be fed on meat and fish from the other farming districts, and bread made in other districts. It's no guarantee, but would make sense if the policy was hard-coded as 'anything made/grown here, you can't have', expanding off the policy of being whipped for stealing fruit - easier to outright ban something than figure out if it was legally gained or not, when there are other alternatives. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if anyone caught eating beef in District 10 was harshly punished, though since District 4 is a Career district, I'll bet they get to eat from their catches.

District 4 is weird though:

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Based on how the capital treats Finnick--blackmailing him into prostitution--I don't think District 4 is too fond of the capital and vice-versa. Plus, I believe they are one of the districts that revolts first--I borrowed the books when I read them so I can't verify. District 2, on the other hand, are the capital's toadies. I'm not sure about District 1, they aren't mentioned much.

As for District 12:

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I think a reason why they were firebombed was because coal isn't extremely useful for the capital. The capital, after all, has nuclear power. My guess is that the coal is primarily exported to the other raw material districts (e.g., District 7, timber; District 11, agriculture; District 10, livestock) as a heating source. The more industrialized ones--such as District 3 and District 2--may, like the capital, use nuclear power.

So, if the districts are revolting, temporarily cutting off the coal supply doesn't hurt the capital. And if the capital wins, they can easily repopulate District 12 while also using the firebombing as a warning against revolt.

[Tyndmyr]

The guards that trade with Katniss and Gale do so not because they're starve otherwise, but for luxury. They very well could crack down on the entire district. You're also exaggerating the difficulties the Capitol faces by losing supplies from a district, they aren't instantly in any danger, meanwhile the same cannot be said for the district.

If you're rationing the food given to your soldiers, you're already in trouble.

[comicshorse]

If you're rationing the food given to your soldiers, you're already in trouble.

More likely then as now army rations leave a lot to be desired in the taste departement and fresh cooked meat will be welcome

[Tyndmyr]

More likely then as now army rations leave a lot to be desired in the taste departement and fresh cooked meat will be welcome

Military food currently isn't exceptionally bad. MREs are not fantastic, true, but military people don't as a matter of course live off MREs. You certainly wouldn't use such a ridiculous solution for an ongoing occupation...you'd use permanent food kitchens and the like.

Plus, yknow, it described the Peacekeepers as "as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is". This is hunger, not delicacy.

[BRC]

If you're rationing the food given to your soldiers, you're already in trouble.

I have yet to hear about a modern army that dosn't give it's soldiers "Rations". "Rations" in an army have a different meaning that "rations" for a civilian population (one implies providing food for the troops, the other implies restricting access). If the soldiers are not receiving rations then they are eating from the same bland food supply as the rest of the population, and will want to spice it up with some game bought from the friendly neighborhood poachers. If the soldiers ARE receiving special rations, then they probably STILL want a little something extra.

It dosn't help that Gale and Katniss's hunting is a victimless crime. Nobody owns the animals they are hunting, unless you count the Capitol, which isn't going to use them. It's banned because they want to keep people within the district borders, but Gale and Katniss are not going anywhere. It's exactly the type of victimless crime that gets ignored in countless societies. Their hunting improves local morale and dosn't pose a threat to anybody. Only a strict Peacekeeper who believes in Enforcement for Enforcement's sake would have any motivation to stop them.

[Reverent-One]

Military food currently isn't exceptionally bad. MREs are not fantastic, true, but military people don't as a matter of course live off MREs. You certainly wouldn't use such a ridiculous solution for an ongoing occupation...you'd use permanent food kitchens and the like.

Plus, yknow, it described the Peacekeepers as "as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is". This is hunger, not delicacy.

The line works as well for meaning not literally hungry, but desiring it as much as anybody for the quality reasons already mentioned.

[Tyndmyr]

The line works as well for meaning not literally hungry, but desiring it as much as anybody for the quality reasons already mentioned.

Except that everyone else, we're told, is literally starving. Them being just as hungry does not translate to "not actually hungry".

[The Glyphstone]

I think you're taking poetic license a bit too far. The Peacekeepers at District 12 are never described as underfed or weak - 'as hungry for meat as anyone else' only implies they don't get fresh meat as part of their allotted meals - nor does anyone else in the district, so it maintains the literal meaning without somehow drawing the conclusion that the guards need that meat to stay healthy.

Besides, it's not true that everyone else is starving. They're for the most part perpetually weak and underfed, but that's only malnourished, not outright starvation. Winter is the only time they legitimately starve.

[Reverent-One]

Except that everyone else, we're told, is literally starving. Them being just as hungry does not translate to "not actually hungry".

It does if Katniss is using "hunger" similarly to "desire", they can want it as much for different reasons. We should remember that we're not dealing with an objective third person viewpoint, but a first person one. As long as the guards are as willing to trade with her as the other people, it's an accurate statement.

EDIT: And Ninja'd by the Glyphstone.

[Dusk Eclipse]

.... I don't know if I should thank or curse you for making me want to read the books (I watched the movie and thought it was entertaining; but nothing stellar); but it seems that there is much more subtext and implications in the books so I feel the need to read them.

[The Glyphstone]

.... I don't know if I should thank or curse you for making me want to read the books (I watched the movie and thought it was entertaining; but nothing stellar); but it seems that there is much more subtext and implications in the books so I feel the need to read them.

They're nothing stellar, but I don't think you'll want a refund on life after reading them. "Lord of the Flies meet 1984" is a pretty good summary of the overall ambience.

[TheEmerged]

I really don't know why everyone's praised the movie for having a strong female lead. Her powers are being pretty and men doing things for her. Woo. That's some independent woman stuff right there.

Keep in mind who the contemporary competition is - Bella from Twilight, for example.

Besides, I seem to recall her hunting for food, getting into a knife fight with someone else, and threatening to knife an older/large man just because he's not taking her seriously. Maybe she doesn't deserve the all the credit she gets, but she's hardly limited to being pretty.

[The Glyphstone]

Keep in mind who the contemporary competition is - Bella from Twilight, for example.

Besides, I seem to recall her hunting for food, getting into a knife fight with someone else, and threatening to knife an older/large man just because he's not taking her seriously. Maybe she doesn't deserve the all the credit she gets, but she's hardly limited to being pretty.

Plus the element, if you can call it that, of playing to the cameras. Granted, it doesn't exactly scream independent woman to be feigning mourning and concern for your injured man, who you need to make your life complete, but the implied cynicism of the manipulation has resonance with modern-day reality TV.

[Reverent-One]

.... I don't know if I should thank or curse you for making me want to read the books (I watched the movie and thought it was entertaining; but nothing stellar); but it seems that there is much more subtext and implications in the books so I feel the need to read them.

A lot of it comes from the later two books I think. Since it's all first person from Katniss's perspective, we don't get as deep a look into the system until she actually goes and sees more of it.

[Dusk Eclipse]

They're nothing stellar, but I don't think you'll want a refund on life after reading them. "Lord of the Flies meet 1984" is a pretty good summary of the overall ambience.

Meh I managed to read the first twilight book and didn't want that refund (thought I did want a money return on the book) so I think I'll manage, if nothing else I can kill some slow weekends.

[Lord Seth]

Meh I managed to read the first twilight book and didn't want that refund (thought I did want a money return on the book) so I think I'll manage, if nothing else I can kill some slow weekends.

Enh, Twilight's honestly not that bad. It's incredibly stupid, but I can hardly call it bad. The only real difference between it and every other dumb romance novel is that it's the one that happened to get popular.

To be quite honest, I find the hatedom far more annoying than Twilight itself.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I actually can't stand Meyer's writing style... it feels bland (not that I am a literature erudite or anything like that), I just don't like it.

[MLai]

I'm sure THG isn't terribad reading that you can't get beyond Vol. 1... but why would you read THG if you have a finite amount of reading time and there's tons of other worthwhile sci-fi/fantasy novels out there? For example, have you read everything here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknap...i-novels-ever/
That's just how I look at it.

Well first off you claimed that the manga was the original, when it is really a rather shallow adaptation of the movie, which was a rather good adaptation of the novel. It also doesn't help that Battle Royale is essentially "What if we took the Lord of the Flies and combined it with the Long Walk" the same way the Hunger Games is essentially "What if we took Battle Royale and combined it with 1984".

I agree with your last sentence 100%. To explain...
I don't recall saying BR to be the original of anything. In fact my statement was in reply to "THG is inspired by the Theseus myth" which automatically shows that I acknowledge the Theseus myth to be the original or close to the original.
I was simply saying that it's giving the author too much credit to say that she's inspired by classic lit... rather than something much more modern, widely available and populist, and suspiciously closer to what she wrote.
You can bash on BR all you want; I won't disagree with you. I wasn't mentioning BR as a compliment to it, LOL.

[Xondoure]

On the other hand; classic lit is classic for a reason, and I'd expect any person who spends a fair amount of their time dwelling on english literature to be at least passingly familiar with such myths as Theseus and the Minotaur, the Trials of Heracles, Perceus and Andromeda, Jason and the Argonauts, the Iliad, and of course the Odyssey. Whereas I wouldn't necessarily expect them to be familiar with Battle Royale.

[The Glyphstone]

I dunno about 'populist' - until THG came out, I don't know anyone who'd ever heard of Battle Royale outside the niche market of anime/manga fans. Though I think I'm confusing populist with popular again.

[Mauve Shirt]

I'm sure THG isn't terribad reading that you can't get beyond Vol. 1... but why would you read THG if you have a finite amount of reading time and there's tons of other worthwhile sci-fi/fantasy novels out there? For example, have you read everything here:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknap...i-novels-ever/
That's just how I look at it.

I hate hate HATE this. "Why would you read a book when my tastes differ and there are books that I find better than that book?"
I like my books to have qualities that most science fiction and high fantasy DON'T have. Like incorporating the worldbuilding into the story instead of spending pages explaining why things are this way. Give the characters a reason to explain it. Or a worse sin of SciFi and High Fantasy, NOT giving me characters I care about. I don't care about what happens to the world, it's not a world that exists, so I have to care about the people that live in it.

[MLai]

@ Xondoure:
Well that goes back to the amount of respect I have for the said author. If I think she's a great writer, I'd readily expect her to be familiar with classic lit and why they're classic. If I think she writes dredge that's popular with young immature-minded readers, my opinion is that she gets her inspirations from literature of the lower common denominator.
It's not as if I can prove she ripped off BR; that's not my point.

@ Glyphstone:
Yes, and that fulfills the criteria for successful plagiarism: It's readily available at any bookstore's manga section so she can easily have skimmed through them, but it's still niche enough that she can deny ever having seen them and people will take her word for it.

@ Mauve:
(1) I wasn't even talking to you. Therefore, "Why would you read a book when my tastes differ and there are books that I find better than that book?" doesn't apply here. Dusk Eclipse was implying he was looking for some nonspecific page-turner to read on a slow weekend and that he has a broad palate for fiction, without specifying any genre.
(2) You're acting as if I wrote that list, and that you know my reading tastes, and that somehow I don't care about any of your listed criteria. And yet, for someone who you think don't like THG's genre, I seem to have read all those preceding works that inspired it. I must really hate its genre, huh?

[Mauve Shirt]

1) Dusk eclipse said "I want to read this book now" and you responded with "Why? This list says there are better books out there and I agree with it."
2) The books THG is loosely related to/based on are not necessarily the same genre. I certainly don't think Theseus has anything like the same flavor of THG.

[MLai]

1) Dusk eclipse said "I want to read this book now" and you responded with "Why? This list says there are better books out there and I agree with it."
2) The books THG is loosely related to/based on are not necessarily the same genre. I certainly don't think Theseus has anything like the same flavor of THG.

(1) He said he saw the movie and found it ok but not spectacular "omg must read book nao." And then he says this thread intrigued him to read the book because it suggests the book is better than the movie and has deeper themes, more complicated narrative, and somesuch. (Paraphrased.) So I suggested that there are books out there that definitely have deeper themes, more complicated narrative, and somesuch.

(2) I meant more like The Lord of the Flies, The Most Dangerous Game, The Running Man (just threw this movie in there), etc.

[Parra]

Ah the Running Man. Classic Jessie Ventura.

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continue with your discussion

[The Glyphstone]

@ Glyphstone:
Yes, and that fulfills the criteria for successful plagiarism: It's readily available at any bookstore's manga section so she can easily have skimmed through them, but it's still niche enough that she can deny ever having seen them and people will take her word for it.

And yet 'could' does not mean 'did', but you're working from the base assumption that it was, not to mention that I doubt it was 'readily available' anywhere outside specialized manga stores until Hunger Games was published (the best thing to ever happen to Battle Royale, for all the free publicity). Parallel development works in literature as well as it does biology, and particularly when you're discussing two completely unconnected genres like Japanese Manga and American YA fiction, the concept of 'dystopian gladiator games to the death...WITH CHILDREN!" is not exactly hard to come up with. Looking at online summaries, I can totally see the arguments in favor of the connection - dystopian government looking to suppress rebellion, children fighting to the death, a cheesy forced romance between two protagonists arranged to get them both out alive...but I find it a lot more superficial than you're taking as a given.

[MLai]

If the Capital had Captain Freedom commercials, kids would be throwing themselves at the recruiter lady in every district.

@ Glyph:

It's not as if I can prove she ripped off BR; that's not my point.

[The Glyphstone]

Not sure who Captain Freedom is, but okay.

Oh, right, Running Man.

[comicshorse]

I dunno about 'populist' - until THG came out, I don't know anyone who'd ever heard of Battle Royale outside the niche market of anime/manga fans. Though I think I'm confusing populist with popular again.

I wasn't, at the time, into anime/manga but had seen the movie. This seemed pretty well know but perhaps just among my circle