The Hunger Games
By Suzanne Collins

A Retroview by Eric Allen

What do you get when you mix Harry Potter with The Most Dangerous Game? You get the dystopian Hunger Games. This is a book that I have tried and failed to read three times in the past, and it was only seeing that there would be a movie coming out this year that spurred me to finally slog my way through it. It's really hard for me to lay a finger on the exact reason I didn't like this book at first. There were a lot of small nit-picky things that when taken separately are no big deal, but when added together they made it hard for me to get going. As a whole, the story and the characters are excellent, and quite enjoyable, it's really more the writing that put me off of it, and more the style than any real problems with inconsistancies or other such things that would make me start screaming bad writing.

The Hunger Games tells the tale of those who live after the fall of America and the rise of Panem from its ashes. Panem consists of the capitol, and twelve districts, each producing a different item needed by the capitol. The people of these districts work as virtual slaves under thier harsh overlords, barely squeaking by in a miserable and starving existense. There was once a thirteenth district, but they were utterly destroyed by the capitol for rebellion, and to remind the other districts of the superiority of the capitol two children, called Tributes, are chosen from each district, one boy, one girl, to participate in the Hunger Games every year. The twenty-four Tributes will be prepped and trained and then dumped into an arena where they will fight to the death until only one remains. The games are televised throughout all of Panem and watching is required by everyone so that they know the price of rebellion.

We follow Katniss Everdeen in first person perspective as her beloved, innocent and gentle younger sister Prim is chosen for the Games against all odds. Katniss immediately volunteers to take Prim's place to save her life, knowing that she will likely lose her own in the process. The boy chosen is one Peeta Mellark, who has the distiction of being the one boy on Earth that she owes her life to. She does not know if she can bring herself to kill him in repayment for his kindness toward her in the past, and hopes that someone else gets to him first so that she will not have to.

(view spoiler)[The Tributes are prepared, trained, weighed, measured, and scored, then tossed into the arena where the fight begins. The Tributes are wittled away one by one until only Katniss and Peeta remain. Rather than one killing the other, they decide to take poison and die together in a final defiance to the capitol, but they are stopped and both declared winners so as not to ruin the games. (hide spoiler)]

The good? There were several things that Suzanne Collins did very right in this book. First of all--and I know this will probably sound a bit sexist--is that the main protagonist, the one whose eyes we see the entire story through, is a girl. Oh women CLAIM to understand men, and perhaps they do understand men slightly better than men understand them, HOWEVER the vast majority of women I have met, and whose books I have read don't have the first clue about how men are supposed to act, think and react. It's the same with men writing female characters. Don't think I'm just ripping on women here, in fact, men are FAR worse at it most of the time. In general I prefer the central figure in a story to share the same gender as the author, because a woman understands a woman better than a man, and a man understands a man better than a woman. The characters feel far more authentic that way. There's always something just a little off about female characters written by men, and male characters written by women, and when those characters are the one character the entire story revolves around the slight discrepencies in their behavior become huge, glaring chasms. Read The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima for a PERFECT example of a female writer with no earthly clue how men are supposed to act, but still insists on her main protagonist being male for some unknown reason. Had this story been about Peeta rather than Katniss I believe that there would have probably been so much wrong with the character as to make the entire story completely unreadable. Keeping the focus on the female character with only very brief interactions with the male character spared us that. There are writers out there that can completely nail characters of the gender opposite to their own, but the vast majority of them struggle with it to the point that they simply resort to stereotyping.

As the first book of a trilogy The Hunger Games does an excellent job of setting the stage. The history is laid out, the reason for the games, and other things of that nature are explained in an interesting way, though there are a few places where she resorts to infodumping rather than having the history lessons incorporated more solidly into the story. For the most part Collins understands that a character who has grown up with the Hunger Games all her life is not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to herself in her head for our benefit. Though there are some places where the info is just dumped on us, they are few and far between, and Collins uses memories and the interactions of the characters to paint the picture of the world for us most of the time.

Collins takes an idea that is not altogether original and puts her own spin on it, making something that is old and tired interesting again. Katniss is a very well developed and likable character who has to deal with some very real and harsh dilemmas. Peeta is more of a stereotype, but in this story his character works pretty well. Using stereotypes is not an unforgivable sin, and a good writer can make a stereotype both likable and realistic. When stereotypes are used well they can make a story where the reader can only see the world through the eyes of a single character like this one feel much more real. Stereotypes are familliar, and when there isn't a lot of time and interaction between the characters to develop them fully using a stereotype helps the reader to identify more with the character. It is far better to use a stereotype than it is to leave a character vague, wooden and ambiguous.

Though there were several uses of Dues Ex Machina in this story, the most glaring and abhorant one was merely a cruel trick, and at the time that it first showed up I was rather annoyed at it, as it removed the sole conflict that Katniss was dealing with. However, it was very powerful when it was taken back, so it worked more to the advantage of the story rather than making it turn out conveniantly happy in the end.

The bad? Like I said earlier, I have tried and failed to read this book three times before finally completing it. The first and most glaring reason is the writing style. I completely and utterly hate it. I am not a big fan of the first person perspective in the first place. In my opinion, having the story told by one of the characters and only seeing things through their eyes gives a very narrow view of the world. I find that the different and often contrasting viewpoints offered by third person to be far more preferable as it fleshes out the world and gives a lot more color to things than you would normally have with first person. Though that is not the reason I hate the style so much. Some of my favorite books are told in first person and I love them despite my dislike for the perspective. The problem with the writing here, and I know that it's just me nitpicking over personal preference, is that it is told in present tense. Normally a story is told in past tense, in first person you have the character telling the story as though he or she is recounting it to you. In third person you have a narrator telling you what happened, and giving you varrying degrees of insight into the hearts and minds of the characters. In this book Katniss describes everything to us as it is happening, and that really annoyed me. It was the major reason I put this book down three times, vowing never to finish it. I don't know WHY I dislike it so much, I just do. It was extremely distracting to me, making what would have otherwise been a very good book something that took me a few tries to finally get through. Also there are a few places where the tense is inconsistent, wavering between present and past, and I'm not talking about the flashbacks. This is a problem that I mainly lay at the editor's feet, however, not the writer.

Collins seems to have a bit of a problem with writing action. When exciting things are happening the pacing needs to pick up. The tone needs to change. The reader needs to feel the tension and the danger. However, in this book, a lot of the action scenes are told with the same tone and pacing as scenes where the characters sit down to dinner. Think of it as though the most exciting part of your favorite book is being read to you in complete monotone by Ben Stein. That's what the action scenes in this book feel like to me.

There are several uses of Dues Ex Machina, which, while annoying, do not completely ruin the story. Again, it's just me nitpicking. The real kicker here is that it wouldn't have been possible to call them Dues Ex Machina had Collins developed the idea of Sponsors better before the Games began. Not telling the reader their purpose beforehand basically gives the characters get out of jail free cards out of nowhere. I've been known to use the plot conveniance fairy once or twice in my own writing, and doing so doesn't usually ruin a story if its limited to less important events, however, when all of it could have been avoided with a single sentance explaining what the Sponsors do earlier in the book, that's just bad storytelling.

There are a few very contrived moments in the story where it is impossible to call them anything but fake and forced, and again, it's just me nitpicking here, but when you combine it with the other things I've mentioned it's enough for me to take a couple stars off the rating.

In conclusion, I did enjoy this book despite the flaws I found in it, and I am currently reading the second in the series. However, there were a bunch of small, insignificant things that I found to be annoying or distracting within the story that piled up. Therefore I'm giving it three stars rather than five. The action scenes are almost boring with no real tension or horror in something that should be completely horrible. The writing style is very annoying and distracting to me, and because of it, it took me four tries to actually finish this book. If you can get past the writing style and don't much care about Dues Ex Machina, and contrived plot convenience you will likely find a great deal of enjoyment in this book. Honestly though, a fanfic about Harry Potter Characters playing The Most Dangerous Game would likely have been far more entertaining.

I liked this book a lot better when it was called Lord of the Flies. If you want a well written book about brutality and children murdering each other, William Golding is a MUCH better writer than Suzanne Collins, and his book offers some very provocative questions and messages. Such as what makes us human, and without our laws, our civilization, our society, we're no better than beasts. I found no message overt or hidden within The Hunger Games, except that it's all right to murder people if it's for the sake of survival. Not exactly the sort of thing I'd like my kids to take away from a book they've read. In fact, Collins seems to go out of her way to NOT give any real message in this book, which I found rather odd. Why give a shocking story of children killing each other and not try to teach a lesson with it? Whatever. *shrug*

Check out my other reviews.

—EXTRA—

The Hunger Games
Movie Review
By Eric Allen
Added 3/23/12

2.5/5 Stars

The Hunger Games made a better movie than it did a book. I enjoyed it far more than I did trying to decipher Suzanne Collins’ incomprehensible writing style. That is not to say that it was a great movie. It had more than its fair share of problems. However, it WAS better than the book.

First of all, I believe that this movie should be re-titled to Awkward Silence: The Movie, or perhaps Tell, Don’t Show: The Movie. What little background music that there was--and let me tell you there was not much at all--seemed rather inappropriate to what was actually happening on-screen. Maybe 15 minutes of the bloated 142 actually had any real background music to it. And considering that the two leads Josh Hutchinson (You wouldn’t know him, he’s not in anything anyone has ever actually seen) and Jennifer Lawrence (X-Men: First Class) have about as much on-screen chemistry as a block of wood and a piece of stone, this leads to long, long, loooooooong stretches of awkward silence whilst two people who CLEARLY do not like each other try, rather unsucessfully, to pretend that they do. Actually, I think I’m being a little insulting to the block of wood. Hutchinson would have to take three or four steps up to be considered wooden. He delivers all of his lines in complete monotone and actually appears to be reading them from off-screen cue cards more than once during the film. And to be fair to Lawrence, her character is actually supposed to BE a piece of stone.

Film is a visual medium. You see things. You hear things. This in turn makes you FEEL things. This movie failed so spectacularly to do so. There is an old saying when it comes to writing of any kind, but it applies doubly for any visual media. Show, don’t tell. You show people things, you don’t have someone sit there and tell you about them. Some things, it is true, are impossible to show, or lead to plot holes if you don’t just sit down and explain them, but there was only one instance of that in this movie, and frankly, it was handled with much better care than it was in the book. Everything else should have just been shown. Let me give you an example from early on in the movie. It begins with white text on a black screen, telling you what the Hunger Games are. You’re making a freaking movie for God’s sake!!! Show us the damn Hunger Games and let us see for ourselves!!! Shortly thereafter we are treated to images of war whilst Donald Sutherland as President Snow narrates over the top of it, telling us the entire back-story. You know what would have been a more exciting way to explain the back-story and draw people into the movie right from the start? Take that same narration whilst the opening credits are playing, and show a montage of previous Hunger Games! You get the exact same information out, but the audience is absolutely riveted from the first image, they SEE the horror of the Games, and they FEEL how horrible it is. When you have pictures of nothing connected to what the Games actually are, and dry, boring narration, combined with white text on a black screen, it is not as powerful. It doesn’t draw people in the way it would have had you actually shown them what the Games are like. This is made worse because they actually DID film scenes from previous Hunger Games. They show throughout the entire movie on TV screens in the background. A little editing magic and this Film would have been so much more powerful than it was.

This also leads me to a lot of head scratching. Later in the film the back-story for Katniss' father is shown in a very well done flashback, rather than simply told to us. That two minute flashback drew me into the film far better than any other scene. It was very well edited, it had appropriate music, and it got the message across without speaking a single word. If the filmakers were capable of such brilliance, WHY DIDN'T THEY USE SOME IN THE REST OF THE MOVIE!!!

The background music, the ambient sound, the sound effects, these things all come together to create the atmosphere of the film. They make you feel more like a part of the movie, instead of a spectator. They make the fake feel real. There was no background music during the vast majority of this movie, and the sound effects were rather lacking as well. At no point did I feel that these people were actually in a forest. It felt exactly like it was, a fake forest in a sound stage somewhere because shooting on location costs too much money these days. Most of the music that did appear in the movie sounded more like stock music rather than anything actually composed for this film. There is a credit for the musical score, one Stuart Michael Thomas, and my thought upon seeing it was, “what musical score?”

This is, when you get right down to it, an action movie. And for an action movie, the action was incredibly lacking. Most of it happens off-screen to preserve the film's PG-13 rating. The action that does appear on-screen is in close up shaky-cam, which makes it near impossible to tell what is actually going on. Yes, I get that you want to add something of realism to the action, however, this is a film. The purpose of a film is to SHOW the audience what is happening. When your camera is WAY too close to the actors, and shaking all over the place, the audience cannot SEE what is going on and you have FAILED to SHOW them what is happening, negating the ENTIRE purpose of filming the movie in the first place.

The Hunger Games has a star studded cast, including Donald Sutherland, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Elizabeth Banks from Scrubs, and Wes Bently of American Beauty fame. The problem with this is that NONE OF THEM ARE IN LEADING ROLES!!! Most of them are relegated to glorified cameos, and completely wasted in this film. They’re shoehorned into scenes where they really don’t belong just to give them something to do in the movie. Why even bother? And seriously, did they spend all of their money on these glorified cameos, leaving nothing for a soundtrack, some good sound design, a head writer that is not also the director, and lead actors that can actually act? I do have to say that Woody Harrelson COMPLETELY stole every single scene that he was in. He was the best and most memorable part of the entire movie. He seemed like the only actor in the entire film that was having a good time with his role, and he was perfectly cast as Haymich.

For the most part Writer/Director Gary Ross took a book that was, let’s face it, not very well written, and he made something that surpassed the original medium. Suzanne Collins, writer of the novel upon which the film is based, is credited as a co-writer, however I believe that this credit was given simply for a consulting role. Why? Because the screenwriting here, bad as it was, was LIGHTYEARS beyond anything Collins has ever shown herself capable of.

With three credited writers, and eight credited producers, it is no wonder why this film is the mess that it is. My advice to the filmakers for the next film: Show, don't tell. One writer, who is not also the director. One Producer. Fire the rest of the yahoos and spend their salary on some real sound design, music, and real editing. If you liked the book, you’ll probably like the movie. It follows the book very well and what changes were made to the story, in my opinion, were for the better. It suffers from a lack of general ambiance because the music and sound budget was obviously very low, and actors who have the on-screen chemistry of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. And it does a lot of telling rather than showing. Also, there are a great many things in this film that will make no sense to anyone that has not read the book. Use your own discretion over whether it is something you wish to see or not.