Hunger Games Wrap

It’s a wrap! I sometimes hate to come to the ending of a book. It’s like the most perfect day you  could ever imagine, but then it’s midnight and you know it’s over. I’m glad this is one is over! Midnight couldn’t come fast enough. But, it was burning me to finish it. I probably should have chosen another book. This is the kind of book that is not easily forgotten. It’s haunting. It’s brutal. It’s riveting. In the beginning, it was so compelling, I couldn’t put it down. I had a love-hate relationship going on throughout. The futuristic gladiator thing isn’t my genre and neither is the whole theme of children killing children. I have to confess that it kept The Lord of the Flies flooding my mind, and I hate that book to the point of refusing to teach it the last time I taught sophomores. Instead, I opted to teach Fahrenheit 451 – another dystopian setting, yet much more agreeable than that of The Hunger Games.

While I understand the part of kill or be killed and I understand that rebelling is not an option in this society (or non-society), as a mother I cannot fathom just giving your child a hug and sending them to a death-fight in which they will most likely be killed. I hated the whole child killing child in the Lord of the Flies too. We strive to end bullying and to educate our students so that they can put an end to this, yet we encourage them to read and embrace books that idealize or rationalize the very thing that we strive to stamp out in real life.

On a positive note, the storyline is addicting. Normally, I would put such a book down and refuse to finish reading. This book demands to be finished. Collins creates characters so believable, you will root for them even though you hate what they are doing. You will find yourself thinking about them – constantly. Katniss, the main character, is a strong teenage female who sacrifices herself to save her sister from the game by going in her place. Other than that act, I found her to be totally self-centered until she beats the system by feigning the attempt to commit a suicide pact with Peeta in order to save him when the rules of the game change and the two from the same district are ordered to compete. Everyone knows she would have slaughtered him.

The fact that I completed this book, while hating it, attests to the quality of the writing, the believability of the characters, and ever driving quest to just get it finished to find out what happens in the end. I don’t think I will finish the trilogy.


Update: My "Older" YA Lit reading daughter just finished the series and thinks I'm "nuts" because I didn't care for this book. She cannot believe that I am not compelled to read the other two! Just not in it!

Publisher: Scholastic Press

(Trilogy Box Set)

ISBN-10: 0545265355

ISBN-13: 978-0545265355