Curtis’s Comments (group member since Dec 16, 2013)

Curtis’s comments from the On Tyrants & Tributes : Real World Lessons From The Hunger Games group.

As for inter-generational discussions...I'll let you know when I've succeeded in convincing my daughter to read it....

This question reminds me of the flashbacks to Rico's "History and Moral Philosophy" class in Heinlein's Starship Troopers (not to be confused with the horrible late-90s movie).

I see two potential themes related to history. There's personal history, that is the history/legend you know or which is (somewhat) reliable handed to you directly from your relatives, friends, etc. Then there's social history, i.e., the kind of history kids tend to learn in Social Studies classes and which is concerned with political relationships, both peaceful and non.

In The Hunger Games , the Districts seem to survive on personal history. Within each District, people have their daily relationships, and history seems limited to a generation or two. Katniss knows about her mother and father, but we get very little about her grandparents, and most of that obliquely (e.g., by learning that Katniss's maternal grandfather was an apothecary). Perhaps the limited memory is a way of coping with the omnipresent tragedy of their situation, from deadly work environments to oppressive political leaders to diurnal struggles against hunger and poverty.

However, even in the midst of this limited historical personal memory, we can see the passing down of knowledge for helping people survive, and this serves as something of a social subconscious. Primarily, this is seen in the handing down of trade skills, such as Mrs. Everdeen's apothecary knowledge, which she eventually teaches to Prim, or Peeta's learning various baker's skills from his parents. And of course, Katniss learning to hunt and forage from her father. Interestingly, this type of memory seems to be primarily peaceful -- although, as we can see, it is adaptable to non-peaceful uses, not just with Katniss's archery skills, but also with Peeta's strength and camoflage.

[Potential SPOILER in the next paragraph]

The Capital seems more interested in promoting a very specific conscious social history (distinct from the subconscious social history noted above). As we've all heard quipped, history is written by the victors, and there is definitely some question -- more so in the books than in the movies, I think -- about whether the rebellious war in the distant past actually went down the way Pres. Snow et al would have everyone believe. Was there truly a "rebellion," or was it rather a successful coup d'état with some really convincing (when accompanied by a gun) post facto propaganda? We learn in the later books that there is a District 13, which officially was blasted into nothingness, and the District's very presence acts, ironically, as a smoking gun that indicates the Capital's version of things isn't always correct.

So, to get back to one of the original questions posed, I think this book very much has a theme of "knowing your history." But very often knowing history isn't enough. You have to be willing to question the history you "know," and you have to able, mentally and physically, to act when you discover evidence that shows the history you know may not be accurate.

Incidentally, with regard to knowledge of history (or even knowledge in general), from a story perspective I find it interesting that we learn things along with Katniss. This seems very similar to Michael Drout's ideas of "epistemic regime" in The Lord of the Rings, in which we are viewing the story from the perspective of the character who has the least amount of knowledge: In LOTR, it skips from character to character, but in Hunger Games, we get Katniss's view the whole way through. Thus, we are able to know what she knows about history, but we have to learn what others know along with her--or at the very least, we can sometimes surmise things before she does, but that happens rarely in practice, it seems.

One (perhaps obvious) comparison I would make is to Jefferson's "Notes on the State of Virginia," in which he ties his ideas of freedom and liberty to the government, culture and - yes - land of that State, which includes part of the Appalachia region. Given Jefferson's clear impact on the development of American ideas of liberty and the ideals that modern libertarian glean from his writings, I think it makes sense to see a strong correlation with that region and the development of libertarian ideas in general.

P.S. I realize that Jefferson also provided a defense of slavery in "Notes" and espoused some non-libertarian ideas about the equality of different races. Even with such evident contradictions, Jefferson's influence on ideals of freedom is hard to dispute.

A recurring theme throughout science-fiction works is that of "The Other," which Ursula K. Le Guin defines as "the being who is different from yourself." ("American SF and The Other" in The Language of the Night ). The Other sometimes manifests itself in sci-fi through human interactions with non-humans — e.g., aliens, intelligent machines, etc. — but very often "otherness" is manufactured between groups of humans as well.

I see a big theme of The Other in The Hunger Games, primarily between the Capital and the Districts. Partly this is seen in the extravagant lifestyle of the Capital as opposed to the modest lifestyles of the Districts, but it is also in the very language used to talk about the pre-story rebellion: YOU rebelled against US, and now WE rule over YOU.

Otherness also appears among the Districts themselves, and the otherness is fostered and encouraged by the Capital to help keep the Districts subjugated. This is why I think the scene where Katniss tenderly takes care of Rue's body is so powerful, because it shows a rejection of the Capital's attempt to define otherness based on incidental locality. The theme is reinforced in Catching Fire when you slowly realize that tributes from multiple Districts are working together, along with a few folks in the Capital, to get Katniss out of the games.

My favorite scene is Katniss's tender treatment of Rue after she dies (zips her coat, lays her head down gently, surrounds her with flowers), followed by her salute (showing that she truly considered Rue not only an ally, but a true friend and equal) and the subsequent riot, started by a man we are meant to presume (I believe) is Rue's father.

Kate wrote: "And, I'm a sucker for an academic Buffy reference every time...."

Not only am I also a sucker for academic Buffy references, but the paper I gave actually originated from an episode of my weekly Buffy/Doctor Who podcast. So...yeah!

Kate wrote: "The reference to Huxley's assertion that science is used by governments as a method of control immediately brought to mind the issue of GMO crops and Monsanto's deep involvement with the government, producing a scary amount of concentrated control over American domestic food supply."

Yes, and I would expand that to cover any sort of crony capitalism. One of my defining moments as a libertarian was the visceral reaction I had when I heard the CEO of the multinational financial institution where I worked at the time acknowledge to thousands of employees, quite proudly, "We love regulation, because it keeps out competition" — and the cheers/laughter that followed that statement. Until then, I had held the fairly naive conservative view that banks = capitalism = freedom.

Jonathan wrote: "I would just like to point out that even though the Hunger Games were fought to the death until a winner has been decided, those who fought in the Colosseum, the gladiators, weren't necessarily so...."

Yes, good point. While it is interesting to find and expand parallels to previous works, it is almost never a 1:1 correlation. It's the differences that provide meaning.

As far as maintaining gladiators, there is something of a Hunger Games parallel in the victory tour and the Quarter Quell, in which at least some of the tributes must participate again. I thought the Catching Fire movie did a great job of showing Katniss's horror when she is told/realizes that the victory tour never ends, and that she will (she believes in that moment) be a tool of the Capital for as long as she lives. Obviously, this isn't exactly like Rome's use of gladiators, but the idea of keeping around good fighters for further propaganda and subjugation of the masses definitely crosses the boundaries of time.

Hyun wrote: "What the hunger games reminds me of is South Korea in the past 60 years or at least from the 1960s-1990s."

Very interesting. I know almost nothing about the history of South Korea, and I never would have made this connection. Thank you for sharing!

I have BAs in English and Humanities and 12 years of corporate communications experience. I am currently working toward my MA in Language & Literature and would like to move toward a career in academia studying speculative fiction.

This past weekend, I gave a presentation on representations of Moloch in speculative fiction. For those who don't know, Moloch is an idol/deity first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and other texts of the time (e.g., the Moabite Stone), to which people would sacrifice children, particularly firstborn children, by burning them in large furnaces. In Paradise Lost, John Milton gave Moloch something of a backstory as a militaristic demon who advocated openly attacking Heaven/God. Since Milton, there has been a sort of dualistic view of Moloch in fantasy and sci-fi literature, one focusing on the sacrificial aspect and the other on a militaristic aspect. Interestingly, the sacrificial aspect tends to take the form of criticism against industrialization, modernization and technology, as seen in works like Alexandr Kupin's "Moloch" (1896), Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (1955), and more recently the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "I Robot, You Jane...." (1997). Works focusing on the militarization/nationalization angle include Karel Čapek's War with the Newts (1937) — which also has a strong 2-tiered society seen in the industrialization stories noted above — as well as Ernest Bramah's The Secret of the League (1907), Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence (1948) which worked out ideas he put forth in Science Liberty and Peace , along with selected episodes from TV shows like Stargate: SG1 and the currently running Sleepy Hollow.

There are no explicit references to Moloch in The Hunger Games books that I know of, so why am I bringing it up? Well, partially because Moloch is all I've been thinking about for the last few weeks, and perhaps I'm just seeing him wherever I look... But also because I think there are genuine connections between the works I listed above and the world of Panem. For one thing, Panem is a split world with the Districts supporting the capital, just like the societies in Kuprin's, Lang's, Čapek's and Ginsberg's works. Furthermore, I see a strong correlation in the nationalistic/militaristic worlds in the works of Bramah, Čapek (again), Huxley and Stargate.

In particular, I would draw a direct line between Panem and Huxley's Science, Liberty and Peace. In that essay, Huxley describes how applied (as opposed to theoretical) science is always used by strongly centralized governments to subjugate its citizens, and he calls such governments "national Molochs." He gives historical examples and then discusses contemporary (in 1946) technology like airplanes, tanks and the atomic bomb — examples which can easily be updated to 21st century applications like encryption (which is still considered a military weapon in some legislation), drones and various NSA technologies. In Panem, the applied sciences are used not to create better mining techniques for District 12 or better agricultural science for District 11, and so forth. Rather, any scientific innovation in Panem goes toward controlling the people, either through entertainment or through military. In this respect, Panem perfectly fits the idea of the "national Moloch" that Huxley describes in SL&P. That the tributes are effectively child sacrifices just makes the link to the ancient worship of Moloch even stronger.

Furthermore, I would look to The Golden Bough , in which James George Frazer offers a litany of evidence that ancient sacrifice rituals were believed to extend the life of the king (and, thusly, also the government). Although the sacrifices Frazer lists are not explicitly Molochian, they share the commonality of giving up individual life for the sake of the ruler. Likewise, as shown in the Panem propaganda video, the idea of the Hunger Games is to keep the Districts in check and preserve the power of the Capital over the Districts.

Finally, one other reference of note is fire. Katniss is known as "The Girl on Fire," but of course she doesn't get burned. As noted above, children sacrificed to Moloch were burned in furnaces (at least, that is the belief of many scholars — there are other potential interpretations). Despite being on fire, however, Katniss doesn't get burned, and she ends up not being the good little sacrifice President Snow would like her to be. Instead, fire is used symbolically against the furnace of Panem, consuming the idol itself rather than the would-be sacrifice.

I don't know that Collins had any of this in mind when she wrote The Hunger Games. As I said, I've been living with these ideas about Moloch for some time now, so maybe I'm just seeing shadows from the flames.... But I think there's enough there to make a connection.