Discovery X

On a sunny day

I may be stuck in the office, but I can still enjoy a mug of delicious almond chocolate milk and string cheese while reading Pink’s book on motivation, “Drive”. Not bad.

“The Hunger Games” Book Review

Disclaimer: This is a review of the first book. I will be critiquing the story, characters, and subsequent developments that occur throughout the novel. That means there are spoilers. If you don’t want them, don’t continue reading.

Last night I finished reading the first book in the trending trilogy “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins. I have to say, after all the buzz around the “Games”, the multiple positive reviews the series is getting, and the film premiering tomorrow night… I was sorely disappointed with the work. Given I have not yet read the other two books in this trilogy, “Catching Fire”, or “Mockingjay”, there may still be plot points that I am simply not understanding or mistakenly judging in the greater context of the story and characters. However it is my opinion that the first book should have engaged me enough to make me want to read the other two, not to compensate for substance, but because it compliments and expands what has already been presented. So let me tell you why this book left me unengaged. 

First, a summary of the plot: post-apocalyptic North America, a nation-state by the name of Panem which is governed by an authoritarian regime based in “The Capitol”. The Capitol rules over 12 districts, each specialized in the production of a certain good that they export to their rulers (in The Capitol). The Capitol’s ever-brutish ways drove the districts into a rebellion some 74 years earlier, and in this rebellion the technologically, militarily, and economically superior Capitol defeated the districts, utterly destroying “District 13” for being the inciters and most belligerent of the districts. As further punishment, the annual “Hunger Games” are enacted. This consists of forcing the 12 surviving districts to present the Capitol with 2 tributes each year between the ages of 12 and 18, and representative of each sex (to total in 24 boys and girls) that will then be put into an arena to fight to the death, last one standing wins and earns his/her district a bonus in food rationing. 

We are introduced to this world on “Reaping day”, the day during which The Capitol picks the two tributes to be sent to the city for the 74th annual Hunger Games. The main character, 16 year-old Katniss Everdeen, is a skinny girl who presents us this story entirely through her eyes, and in present tense. Stylistically, this means we will have a linear story with no change in perspective unless there are some fundamental changes that take place in the character herself. We can see this kind of change in books that are also narrated in the present, first-person like “The Catcher in the Rye”, however readers can expect no such twist in this story. Katniss does not fundamentally change throughout the novel. She remains the same asexual, set on survival, hungry girl she is when we are first introduced to her. 

Her motivation to volunteer as tribute is to save her pretty, friendly, pure little sister “Prim” who, having just turned twelve, was the unfortunate pick in the lottery for the Games in district 12. Katniss is extremely overprotective of Prim, and has been the primary provider for her family (Prim and their mother) since her father died in a mine explosion. Even though the Everdeens often go hungry, Katniss doesn’t believe Prim is cut out to be a “hunter” like her as she has gotten emotional when exposed to prey. This seemed extremely contradictory. It seems Prim, although good at the arts of “healing”, would also be of thicker skin given the circumstances she has grown up under. Their mother has been emotionally unavailable since the death of the father figure, making Katniss resent her and withdraw emotionally as well, they often go to bed with empty stomachs, her father died in a really horrible  mine explosion, the district is grimm and many people die around them… Prim sees all this but remains a sweet, happy child, and I ask how? Even if she remains optimistic, which could happen, how does Katniss allow her to not learn how to fend for herself knowing that she could be the one to die out in the woods or if chosen as tribute and does not trust her mother? Yes there is Gale to help, but for Prim’s own good she should have been a little more exposed to the hard work Katniss does. Goats don’t live forever, and I’m sure that is something Katniss has given thought to. No? Never mind then. 

Katniss finds her only male-father-figure substitute in a friend, Gale, with whom she hunts, from whom she learned how to make traps, and trade in the black market. Gale is given no character depth. He is an angry, poor 18 year old that is hopelessly in love with Katniss yet is incapable to tell her up front (why would the prospect of dying any day motivate him to speak more frankly?). Gale touches on the subject of criticizing their oppressive government, but does not explore it further as Katniss only reflects apathetically on how they must persevere for their siblings and refrain from questioning the system. This could have added a lot of substance to the novel, but is instead wasted in repetitive lines inside the first-person train of though that can only sum it up as “not fair”. No, all of the anger you would feel from losing your father to the shabby rules of the district enforced by the Capitol, the endless toil and suffering of relatives, the hunger, and the independence one can feel from surviving despite it all hunting and selling illegally, would certainly not be enough to fuel my courage to be defiant, or at least more questioning about how to improve my standard of life. 

Although I understand that Katniss is worried about bringing home food for her family and caught in the cycle of poverty (as pretty much everyone else in the districts), it is unrealistic that she would not seek out human relationships. You need not marry and have children to know love, yet because Katniss does not want to marry or have children, she is also attributed as someone who avoids love altogether. To me, this is another wasted opportunity to explore conflicting interests and real character development. Furthermore, it is simply unrealistic to ask an audience to believe that a teenage love triangle incites no “giddy” feelings or sexual tension. And I was a little bothered by the fact that so many families simply accepted the fait of their young. Really? 74 years and no opposition culture (the most defiant moment during the Reaping was a moment of silence when the tributes are selected). And how exactly are they forced to watch the games? I’m pretty sure the Capitol wouldn’t kill off all of the districts given they are designated to supply them with some pretty basic materials for their development…. So it seems to me these people wield more power than they ever care to reflect on, which would make sense if they were getting enough food and not randomly watching their children die… but since that is not the case I was expecting greater dissent, and more bloodshed within the districts themselves. 

I introduced the love-triangle without first mentioning the third wheel in the story and second tribute from District 12, Peeta Mellark. He is the son of a baker and has spent his life making cakes, yet is well built and extremely handsome (did I mention Gale is too?). Convenient. Light of hair and pure of heart (like Prim, and the mother character), he is also hopelessly in love with Katniss although he knows nothing about her. Their relationship extends to him tossing Katniss two loafs of bread when she was on the verge of death from starvation, for which he got slapped around by his abusive mother. This also seemed a strange moment to me. A starving district, yet because the bread was a little singed the mother of the baker boy tells him to feed them to the pigs. I’m pretty sure that is not how hungry people act. If you want to say that many people are constantly dying from starvation (as Collins does repeatedly when establishing the setting of the story in the first part of the book) these details are important. 

Well anyway, Katniss and Gale are selected and go off to the Hunger Games. Apparently in the richer districts to be a tribute is more of an honor, and therefore there are many youths who spend their life training… Yet when in the training room, Collins describes these “Career Tributes” as running towards the deadliest-looking weapons and wielding them expertly… which to me was a further disruption of my willingness to delve into this land of fiction. If you have 74 years worth of history with “Hunger Games”, a struggle to survive in different weathers, entirely on strategy, it seems to me “career tributes” would know some fundamentals of self-defense. This means, you don’t go for “deadliest-looking weapons”. You go for what will do the job most quickly and with the least amount of distractions. Further, you stick to what fits your body-type and abilities. There is no one deadliest weapon without a deadliest wielder of that particular weapon…. So that certainly upset my sensibilities. And of course you would expect these career tributes to be trained in the most basic survival skills, like understanding how to feed themselves… but it seems this thought does not occur to their trainers, even after 74 years of the stuff. Rather they go by the so clearly flawed strategy of gathering all the supplies at the start and then killing off the outliers or letting them starve to death. What a well thought-out strategy, worthy of 74 years… granted the supplies were always given in the same manner and in the same territory each year… which they are not. And the alliances that appear? Questionable. Even during all the time the tributes had to meet and greet (granted not much before the games but when your life is on the line, these moments should be made to count) it never occurs our main character to explore the possibility of an alliance to outwit those who have a lead in the game due to their longer time in training. Not even with her own Peeta bread boy (who is willing to die for her, and implies so several times before the romance is sloppily thrown in, just to rebel against the system somehow). 

The strategy deemed appropriate for the District 12 tributes is one of amiability, and romance. Katniss and Peeta pretend to be in love (although this set up only leads to cringing with awkward dialogue and a strange all or nothing approach to the romance by both characters), yet to the reader it is painfully obvious Peeta genuinely feels for Katniss and unfortunately so, since Katniss is oblivious to the point of absurdity, and also unyielding in her “no babies, no love” mentality. Also what about Gale? Oh, nothing, absolutely nothing. He is only brought up occasionally as a memory from home, and towards the end when returning to District 12 (is this really a surprise to anyone?), when Katniss begins to wonder why she feels Gale wont be exactly peaches and cream towards her anymore (yes watching the person you love awkwardly kissing bread during the Games will do that to someone). All topped with a bizarre lack of any sexual arousal in the teenagers. 

Now, more opportunities missed in the novel during which Katniss could have really made some heart wrenching decisions. Sure, she is beat up a little in the process of surviving the games, but she never kills with outright intent, and is only presented with the option of killing once her opponents become effectively veiled in their undoubted “evilness”. While Collins does refer to the duplicity of the tributes, being equally scared, arrogant, and ready to kill others, the only ones that seem to hold doubts about actually killing are Peeta and Katniss. If Rue had been kept alive, Katniss would have had to make a very difficult decision, effectively breaking down her fundamental beliefs and allowing for a greater sense of responsibility and activism to surge through her. But of course another evil tribute takes care of that for her. The second difficult decision they take from Katniss is to kill Cato. Coming down to the last three survivors in the game, Katniss, Peeta, and Cato, it is clear that this confrontation will be a grueling one. Cato has lost his loved one during the games, and must now defeat two opponents in order to return home. Yet Collins chooses to avoid this entirely by introducing muttant human-wolves that do the job for her. And yet again, when forced to have only one victor and therefore setting Peeta and Katniss against each other, Katniss and Peeta choose death together rather than the return of one of them (Peeta essentially asks Katniss to kill him so she can go home). This mutual suicide would make sense if Katniss had actually explored the romance she was exposed to, but it isn’t present in her. It isn’t real. So when she chooses mutual suicide, I couldn’t help but scoff. Wasn’t her most emotional chord Prim? And didn’t she just want to go home for her family? And wouldn’t she think that if they both died, her family would be punished? Yet somehow Peeta becomes more important in that moment than all of that, which had been set to define all her awkward behavior and logic. This to me was a big character miss. 

In this same, flat, unidimensional manner, the people of The Capitol are all fundamentally evil, the people in the districts good, and no in betweens allowed (with the exception of the baker’s wife who is clearly pure evil). Apparently those who have tried to flee from the districts have been awarded cool names, “Axons”, and then get to live in the Capitol (yes as servants, but never starved). Granted, “Axons” have their tongues cut off, but man are they good servants! Because if I lost everything I cared for in life I would certainly be a good servant (or maybe I would take my life and therefore proclaim myself freed rather than resign to slavery). It seems to me a pretty pointless life however, even in the Capitol. It has all become about fashion, food, and entertainment (with a dire lack of phones I might add and everyone gathering around TVs old school, pre-apocalypse style). So that is what evil people do! They are all shallow, short-sighted, and have a taste for neon fashions. The most powerful people in this authoritarian, tyrant, regime, are clearly the Kardashians (because it doesn’t take wits to gain power over a nation). Now I get it. A big rich Capitol with plenty of revenue and down time creates no dissent, no difference in values, no disagreement with the neo-Roman Empire age of lavish and bloody life. Oh, well, good to know, it must be nice that things are so simple. And boring.

I didn’t buy it, and I didn’t care to buy it because the characters were not relatable to me, or realistic to human nature. While I want to see if the next two books fill in the gaps, I am worried they will just add to my discontent. Further, I really don’t care for the short, snappy, contradicting sentence style that is the format with which the story is told. Perhaps I am overly critical of a novel meant for Young Teens, but I think there are genuinely good books written for Young Teens (like I mentioned earlier, “Catcher in the Rye”, “Harry Potter”, “Lord of the Flies”, “Animal Farm”, “The Giver”, “The Castle in the Attic”, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, “1984”, “Gulliver’s Travels”, even “Speak”, etc, etc) and I would like to come by more of them. 

Something I will say for “The Hunger Games”, is they read quickly because readers really want to know how people die (the entire set up is about how people die), and that elicits intense curiosity. The disturbing nature of my curiosity for it was perhaps the most satisfying thing I took from the novel. The Romans really knew how effective some bloodshed in the Colosseum was to their people, and being aware of those impulses is the first step to being able to control them. I wish Collins had been more daring on that front. 

Heute war ein schöner Tag

Today I felt very proud of being a Trojan. After leaving the enchanting Doheny Library to attend class north on Trousdale, I couldn’t help but notice the exciting live band USC had brought onto campus, Eyes Lips Eyes, they had set up next to Tommy Trojan. They were playing their hearts out under the sunny California sky as students like me stopped, tickled with curiosity. I listened happily for a little while, and then forced myself to keep walking as I was risking being late to class. As I made my way up Trousdale, I passed two students having a very heated discussion about binary star systems and their particularities in mass transfers. All of this however would not have been particularly special on campus save for the last bit. WSA has organized their Feminist Day of Pride and are tabling all week, and the last thing I got to see before going to class were all the proud students distributing the shirts to be worn tomorrow, which simply say “This is what a feminist looks like”. To learn about the universe, the world in which we live, and to treat our fellows-in-life respectfully, well that is what it’s all about. And did I mention it is a full moon tonight? Wonderful, this world can be. 

Ideas for Language Learners

I need some fresh methods to learn languages and/or polish languages I have already spent a lot of time trying to learn. An idea came to me earlier today as I was writing in what has predominantly become my “quotation” journal; that is to write more journals, but in different languages. This means I need to begin journaling in Spanish, French, Italian, and of course German. These are languages I can write in to some extent (some much better than others) yet the practice that I could attain from sharing or exchanging them with natives in the language would be invaluable. My journal partners could then mark up my journals, comment on my thoughts, share their own thoughts, in short- everything you would expect from creating a journal together. Doodles are accepted too as they are simply another form to communicate (one involving no grammar)! The thought of these language journals got me pretty excited, but now I need to find partners that will make it a viable project. If not, there is a really good website (German learners this is for you) called briefefreunde.de which consists of eager pen pals. I spent some time using it last year and really enjoyed it, but then I forgot my password and simply walked away from practicing. If anyone is interested in journaling with me I would be very happy to hear from you! Please message me :)

Fundraising Week for USC College Democrats

Help us raise money to lead our club through the rest of our Spring Events and enjoy some convenient Valentines’ Delivery Service. Stop by our booth anytime from 11am-2pm Monday through Wednesday this week and next or give a donation via our Act Blue page. 

We are counting on you!

https://secure.actblue.com/page/vday

Oh Sweet Valentine!