Suzanne Collins and Christianity: A Review on The Hunger Games Series
Thanksgiving, 2011.
Nerd #2, our mom and I all disappeared for the entire weekend to read this ridiculously addictive The Hunger Games series that we’d discovered only days before heading out on holiday. Long story short, we were absent from our family for about four days—cycling through the books like crazy, reading under the table at meals, quoting the characters, discussing in earnest whether we would survive the Games, shouting, “May the odds be evah in your favor!” in public settings every chance we got, and generally driving our patient family members crazy. Unsurprisingly, most people who read the books have had a similar experience. With the release of the four corresponding films in the past few years, the popularity of the series has sky-rocketed incredibly. It’s easy to see why the books are so popular: they’re written from a gripping first-person, present-tense perspective, the characters are masterfully drawn and just about every chapter ends with some horrifying cliffhanger. Very few series have seen such widespread success. And yet, after Harry Potter, I think it’s safe to say that The Hunger Games books remain one of the most controversial series targeted for middle grade to young adult readers in the past 15 years. After stepping back from the books for a while and looking at the general obsession from afar, I started to wonder if it was just all hype and overstimulation in a flooded young adult market. Then Nerd #2 and I discovered that Suzanne Collins is Catholic. Whaaa?!
The Scapegoated Victim The #1 complaint I hear about The Hunger Games series is that it’s about "kids killing kids."
Yes, the main premise of the book is that twenty-four children are thrown into an arena in which there can only be one survivor. But it’s not about kids killing kids. Rather, it’s about a culture that functions on the enslavement of the majority of its people...and the mechanism that consistently keeps this nation of enslavement functioning is human sacrifice. To clarify this, I recently watched an interview with Bishop Robert Barron (which I’ve included at the bottom of this post) from several years ago when The Hunger Games was released in theaters. He brings up some fantastic points that really began to draw all the pieces together for me. Many of us will remember reading Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery (as well as the horrified silence and shock that necessarily followed). In the story, a young woman is ritually chosen to be stoned to death so that the village’s crops may flourish for the next year. This practice rings of the ancient Aztec rituals in which a young individual was chosen to be sacrificed to their bloodthirsty gods in order to ensure the prolonged welfare of their people. What we’re seeing here, repeated in so many instances throughout literature and history, is the manifestation of sacrificial scapegoating. In order to be relieved of their past wrongdoings and thus secure the favor of their gods (or at least to place the weight of blame on a single person, who then represents the many), these people would, in a sense, place their faults on a single person to be slaughtered—the scapegoat. Sound familiar? It should. This is the story of Christ, except for one detail that the Aztecs lacked: the scapegoated victim defied the system that had been established by the state. He defied death itself and rose in glory, death and sin having been defeated once and for all, and the system by which these functioned having been crushed.
Katniss as the Scapegoat In the first installment of the trilogy, Katniss Everdeen volunteers in place of her sister to compete in the Hunger Games: a televised fight-to-the-death in an arena against 23 other kids. If she wins the Games, she may live a life of comfort with her family. From the very start of the process, however, Katniss resists the glamor of the event by refusing to give in to the adoring crowds who are about to send her into the arena. Upon entering the arena, she does not kill her fellow tributes except in self-defense. In the final moments of the Games, however, Katniss has to make a choice between either killing the final tribute, Peeta Mellark, or sparing him. In the end, they choose to eat poisonous berries in order to deny the Capitol their victor. In the final moments, loudspeakers sound throughout the arena commanding them to stop and instead acknowledging the victory of both Katniss and Peeta. This one act in the arena breaks open the ritual of the Hunger Games and we see the fall of the Capitol progressively throughout the two subsequent books, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. The Games are eventually demolished after much struggle and bloodshed. The Capitol is finally forced to face the wrong they have committed. Bishop Robert Barron brings up, quite accurately, that Katniss and Peeta tend to have a “Christian worldview” throughout the books, defying the carefully established but undeniably immoral mechanism driving their bloodthirsty society. Leave it to Mother Teresa So, we have the act of defiance that perpetuates the story, eventually bringing about the dissolution of the Hunger Games and their scapegoated victims. What I want to look into now is the actual act of human sacrifice that drives the series and has brought about so much controversy. I don’t think any of us can deny that the Capitol is wrong to sacrifice any person for the sake of its social mechanism. It’s the fact that they specifically choose to sacrifice children that makes the story so very disturbing—and yet so reflective of our own culture today, in which children are indeed sacrificed for the sake of comfort. Mother Teresa once said, “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” Could The Hunger Games series be getting at something much closer to home than merely reflecting upon the bloody practices of the Aztecs and the Roman Empire? I tend to think that Suzanne Collins was creating an allegory of the pro-choice movement, of a culture in which children are disposable. It’s not about kids killing kids—it’s about a society that kills its children to fabricate a sense of security and comfort.
(Gotta love Mama T!) How to Recommend… The reason for my placing it in the 14+ category comes down to three points: violence, intensity, and mature content. It’s about a bunch of kids being shoved into an arena to fight to the death. There is a lot of blood, and Suzanne Collins does not hold back from pretty graphic descriptions of the horrors Katniss experiences. The series increases in intensity throughout the three books, culminating into some very accurate portrayals of PTSD. Katniss and her companions consider suicide at certain points, and Katniss attempts to starve herself to death towards the end of the book. I remember feeling completely emotionally drained after I put down Mockingjay. There is some kissing in the first book, which continues throughout the whole series through the love story of Katniss and Peeta (and Katniss’s developing romantic relationship with her hunting buddy back home, Gale—another deal entirely). In Catching Fire, Katniss suffers from intense nightmares following her weeks in the arena, and the only time she is relieved of these horrors is when Peeta stays with her through the night on their Victory Tour. This is innocent, but rumors begin to develop among their companions. Additionally in Catching Fire, there is a character in authority over Katniss's district who is known to have prostitutes; she wonders if she would have ended up like these desperate women if she hadn't won the games. There is also a point at which the previous victors are being brought together to compete in the 75h Hunger Games. These people are kind of nuts and have been through a lot in the aftermath of their days in the arena; in their eyes, Katniss is very innocent. There is a scene following the parade of the tributes in which one of female tributes strips down in an elevator in front of Katniss, Peeta and their entourage because she knows it will freak out Katniss. Just before that, one of the male tributes (who already has a reputation for being a player) is dressed in a fishing net and starts flirting outrageously with Katniss. In Mockingjay, this same character admits that he was forced into prostitution by the Capitol. He also reveals that he was able to collect the scandalous secrets of the Capitol’s people through these encounters. There is not too much information included here, but enough to make me keep the book from my youngest sister until she was thirteen or fourteen.
I’ve rethought The Hunger Games series a lot lately, especially in light of the onslaught of dystopian young adult literature filling the market today and the persisting need to weed through all of it. The more I consider it, the more I realize just how Christian it is, and just how brilliant Suzanne Collins is in her portrayal of this culture of death. The Hunger Games books received a lot of hype for many reasons, which is enough to make anyone wary. You must look closely to see the hidden depth beneath the constant action, the intense violence and the disturbing situations evoked by Suzanne Collins’ writing. Yes, the events of the series are disturbing. They are meant to be so, because they force us to question our own world and the mechanisms by which it functions. Collins opens the door for young adults to begin looking at their world in an intelligent, wary manner. (On a slightly tangential note: Yes, I was the person who showed up an hour early for the first movie, decked out in my Mockingjay shirt and pin, so I could be the first person in the theater. I’ve still got the shirt. And I stayed for all the credits following Mockingjay Part 2. Ultimate nerd, I know.)
Here is Bishop Robert Barron's fantastic commentary: