Hmm. I have mixed opinions about this novel. (By the way, there will be some spoilers here, but nothing concerning how the conflict is resolved; just some early stuff.)
On the one hand, literarily, the book is rather poor. It is intended for middle-school aged kids, but that’s no excuse. For example, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, intended for a younger audience, is superbly written. Hunger Games is probably closer to Harry Potter, in the sense that it tells a good story and gets you hooked, but it has little artistry. But it has even less than Potter, in my opinion.
But it keeps your attention – and not always in a bad way, like the horribly conceived and written Da Vinci Code. Collins spins a fast moving and exciting story, and I found myself rooting for the protagonist, despite the fact that she was an annoyingly naïve (and often just annoying).
But there was an ethical question that I feel the novel never entertained. Quick recap: In a post-apocalyptic world, the US is controlled by one wealthy city; it manages twelve outposts, who all do some sort of forced work for the city: one is agricultural; another technical; our protagonist’s deals with mining coal. In order to maintain their power and fear, every year the city sponsors the hunger games: an “entertainment” for all. Each outpost randomly selects one girl and one boy to go to the city and play in a “fight to the death” game, which is televised. There can only be one winner.
Now, apart from the reasonable furrowed foreheads on account of this being the storyline intended for twelve-year olds (I wouldn't let my kids, if they were twelve, read it), I have a bit of a moral question for the novel. How come the protagonist never engages the possible idea of not killing other people in the game: other people who are innocent? Now, I understand it wouldn't be much of a book then, and I also realize that most people wouldn't agree with this moral choice, but that the novel never even entertains the moral option is…well, beyond unpleasant, actually puzzling. Is the idea that if we were all faced with the choice of accepting death or trying to kill innocent people we would all take out the swords and clubs and bash each other to death?
Just once, the boy from our protagonist’s outpost lightly hints at the possibility of not killing anyone – but he admits he’s not serious. But that’s it. It never comes back up. I understand that in a kid’s book it’s difficult to deal with intricate moral quandaries, but this novel actually makes a moral statement: and it’s one that is self-defeating. While our protagonist desires to live, and more importantly, while she makes friends and teams up with other contestants, she essentially recognizes their humanity. But she is also free to kill other innocent people. Collins gets away with this by making some of the contestants bloodthirsty and consciously sadistic, so it’s easy for us to say, “Oh yeah, kill him, he’s a horrible person.” But I didn't buy it all.
The book is just one of three; but although I read it quickly, even on an entertainment level, I wasn't sold enough to go ahead and read the other two. I will admit it has something to do with my unsettling feelings concerning its moral levels.
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