In "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, the book is based on a dystopian world much similar to the realistic world we live in now. The inequality between rich and poor, media obsession, limited health care, starvation and such not only play a part in the book but also make you look deeper into today’s society. The purpose of utopian and dystopian fiction is to serve as a comparison between a perfect imaginary place and a condition in which everything is bad. I particularly prefer dystopian fiction over utopian fiction because the terrible world the character lives in helps me relate to our own on a literary level, leading to better understanding of issues many people don't like to talk about.
There are many ways the novel criticizes our own society and critiques it very well to show that distinction. One of the many problems with Panem is starvation, which also plays a big role in our society today. The main character Katniss lives in district twelve, one of the poorest districts in Panem where people are constantly struggling to make bread to eat bread. For example, to provide for her mother and little sister Prim, Katniss often hunts illegally with her friend Gale, who has to do the same for his family to survive. “Most of the peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they’re as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is. In fact, they’re among our best customers.” This helps paint the picture of how food is very scarce there, that even the guards who have to uphold the law don’t mind letting people break it to satisfy whatever hunger they have as well.
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Katniss is constantly worrying about whether or not her family might starve. In today’s world many homeless and poor people have the same worries' if it wasn’t for many soup kitchens or programs to feed the poor, like food stamps, many of them would starve and still do.
As a whole I feel that society can familiarize more so with a dystopian society because we know realistically we don’t live in a perfect world. Suzanne Collins achieves this goal in "The Hunger Games"by incorporating characteristics of what represents this in her novel, including characteristics such as urban vs. rural setting, a hero who questions society, totalitarian government, revolution and pressure to conform.
Living in the U.S. you’re a free individual, but unfortunately, in other countries, there's no real “freedom” to do what they want without consequences, such as freedom of speech. This is also true in the novel due to Panem being run on a totalitarian government with strict rules and harsh punishments. With this, there's always a hero who questions society and wants change in how they're living now. Katniss talks about the birds she sees while she’s in the games and how they're free and safe unlike herself. “This is what birds see. Only they’re free and safe. The very opposite of me.” This shows how she feels as a prisoner of something that she has no real way out of unless she kills or gets killed, which relates to many war conflicted countries.
I feel that this book hits home in many ways of how if we don’t change the world we live in, we’ll be in a rude awakening. The characters’ narratives into their own lives, and how they struggle on a daily basis living in their world, kind of foreshadows what might happen in our own world. If things remain the same with wars, greed, starvation and a lot of unnecessary things in today’s society we may one day turn out like "The Hunger Games." May the odds be ever in our favor.
