The Hunger Games 101: Suzanne as a Fan & the Author's Influences

Author

[right arrow] Like all great dystopias, The Hunger Games is informed by elements from contemporary society. While writing the series, Suzanne Collins was concerned with a number of issues including the impact of the media on children's lives, dangerous decisions made by governments, and poverty. The publicity-shy author describes her creation of the story thus:

I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when Katniss's story came to me. One night I'm sitting there flipping around and on one channel there's a group of young people competing for, I don't know, money maybe? And on the next, there's a group of young people fighting an actual war. And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story. (Scholastic Book Club)

Suzanne Collins's influences in creating The Hunger Games contributed to a publishing marvel. In 2006, she pitched a duology to Scholastic under the working title 'The Tribute of District 12'. Scholastic immediately signed the author to a six-figure, two-book deal – which quickly became a trilogy. This initial book deal – the story of one girl from a small District in the futuristic society of Panem – was the seed of a cultural phenomenon and spectacle worthy of the Capitol itself. Since the first instalment was published in 2008, Suzanne Collins has become one of the world's top-ten highest-earning authors; The Hunger Games movie has earned worldwide box office takings exceeding $690 million; and the series has garnered hordes of fans – calling themselves 'Tributes' – who have made the story their own.

Age-wise, The Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen is fairly representative of Collins's target audience. Katniss is our window into the world of Panem - she guides us through the story, sharing her experience first-hand, in engaging present tense narration. She is not an explicitly unreliable narrator, and all that remains unknown to the audience is that which Katniss does not discuss, describe, or explain. We can learn more about that which she does not describe, and the greater cultural context that she inhabits, through examination of the author's influences. In a Scholastic Q&A, Collins was posed the following question: 'What do you want young readers to take away from the books?' She answered that she would want readers to think about whether they are taking their next meal for granted while others starve, and to ask questions about the choices that their government or governments around the world make. 'What's your relationship to reality TV versus the news?' she asks her readers. 'Was there anything in the news that disturbed you because they related to your own life, and if there was, what can you do about it?' Collins's ideas about how she wants her reader to relate to The Hunger Games are key.

So are fans, young and otherwise, taking away these key messages from The Hunger Games books? In order to understand the series, and any works of art, including fanworks, which use it as a source of inspiration, we must first seek to understand the author's reverence of her source material. Collins's unique blending of Greek myth and modern war stories are a refreshing take on the modern-day issues. Child soldiers and the impact of reality television and propagandistic media on young people are explored in an arena created for young people, placing them at the centre of the action and the issue. Many critics have cited the opposition that Collins sets up between reality television and war coverage with the suggestion that this story explores the possibility of reality TV being taken to its furthest, darkest conclusion. Collins's work poses this question: What is real, and what is entertainment?

That being said, Collins's source material is not unusual. Reaching back to Greek mythology, the foundational concept in The Hunger Games is based upon the story of 'Theseus and the Minotaur'. There are many variations of the tale, but the key event is King Minós of Crete ordering that Athens must make Tribute, with seven girls and seven boys aged 8 to 14 to be sacrificed to the city, every nine years, and be placed into the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Tributes are chosen by selecting shards of pottery from a basket: those who draw a piece marked with an X are the chosen ones. Their fate is a terrifying battle to the death where none have been known to survive. Theseus puts himself in place of a Tribute – a young girl, no less – with plans to sacrifice himself. But he emerges a victor, saving the life of the child Aktaíans in the process. In the myth, Agaeus of Athens wonders how many draws it will take until his people rise up in rebellion. The rebels of The Hunger Games's Districts wonder the same – and, where the story begins, 74 years after the end of the Dark Days and into the rule of Panem's Capitol government, the residents of this dystopian future finally have an answer.

In a Q&A with Scholastic, Collins says,

A significant influence would have to be the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. The myth tells [of] punishment for past deeds [...] [and] even as a kid, I could appreciate how ruthless this was. Crete was sending a very clear message: 'Mess with us and we'll do something worse than kill you. We'll kill your children.' And the thing is, it was allowed; the parents sat by powerless to stop it. Theseus, who was the son of the king, volunteered to go. I guess in her own way, Katniss is a futuristic Theseus. In keeping with the classical roots, I send my tributes into an updated version of the Roman gladiator games, which entails a ruthless government forcing people to fight to the death as popular entertainment.

Like Theseus, Katniss volunteers as Tribute. Some translations of the myth see Theseus take the place of a particularly sweet, small, innocent young girl, who is terrified at her fate. Rather than seeking the Minotaur at the heart of the Labyrinth, as Theseus does, Katniss's motivation is to protect that which she loves most: she is sacrificing herself to save her younger sister, Prim. Like Theseus, she leads many Tributes to safety,...