The Girl Who Was on Fire

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OTHER YA SMART POP TITLES

Demigods and Monsters
on Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

 

A New Dawn
on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series

 

Secrets of the Dragon Riders
on Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Saga

 

Mind-Rain
on Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies Series

 

Flirtin’ with the Monster
on Ellen Hopkins’
Crank
and
Glass

 

A Visitor’s Guide to Mystic Falls
on
The Vampire Diaries

 

Through the Wardrobe
on C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia

 

Nyx in the House of Night
on P.C. and Kristin Cast’s House of Night series
(coming summer 2011)

You could call the Hunger Games a series that is—like its heroine—on fire. But its popularity, in itself, is nothing new. We live in an era of blockbuster young adult book series: Harry Potter, Twilight, now the Hunger Games. It’s more unusual these days for there
not
to be a YA series sweeping the nation.

All of these series have certain things in common: compelling characters; complex worlds you want to spend time exploring; a focus on family and community. But the Hunger Games is, by far, the darkest of the three. In Twilight, love conquers all; Bella ends the series bound eternally to Edward and mother to Renesmee, without having to give up her human family or Jacob in the process. In Harry Potter, though there is loss, the world is returned to familiar stability after Voldemort’s defeat, and before we leave them, we see all of the main characters happily married, raising the next generation of witches and wizards. In the Hunger Games, while Katniss may conclude the series similarly married and a mother, the ending is much more bittersweet. Her sister and Gale are both lost to her in different but equally insurmountable ways. The world is better than it was, but there are hints that this improvement is only temporary—that the kind of inhumanity we saw in the districts under Capitol rule is the true status quo, and that the current peace is ephemeral, precious, something toward which Panem will always have to struggle.

In other words, the Hunger Games ends in a way that feels surprisingly
adult
—bleak, realistic, as far from wish fulfillment as one can imagine. Such a conclusion only emphasizes something YA readers have known for years: that there is serious, engaging, transformative work going on in YA literature. The Hunger Games is more than Gale versus Peeta; there’s so much more at stake in this series than love (and so much more at stake
in loving
, here, as well). The series takes on themes of power and propaganda, trauma and recovery, war and compassion. It’s about not just learning one’s power, but learning the limits of one’s power as well.

Because at its core, the Hunger Games is a coming-of-age story, and not just for Katniss—it’s a coming-of-age story for Panem, and in a way, for us, its readers, as well. The series pushes us to grow up and take responsibility both personally and politically for our choices: those Capitol residents we see milling through the streets in
Mockingjay
, the same Capitol residents who so raptly watched the Hunger Games on television year after year without recognizing the suffering that made it possible, are
us
. That’s a heavy message to take away from any book series, but an important one for all of us—whether we ourselves would be shelved under Young Adult or not.

The pieces you’re about to read don’t cover everything in the Hunger Games series (they couldn’t cover everything), but they do tease out at least a few of the series’ most thought-provoking ideas. Together, they provide an extended meditation on the series and its world, on Katniss and our response to her, on love and family and sacrifice and survival. But you shouldn’t take this to mean the anthology is always as serious as
Mockingjay
at it heaviest. There’s humor, and warmth, and hope here, too. Each of our contributors has brought his or her own particular interests and expertise to exploring the series, and topics run the
gamut from fashion to science to reality television and real-world media training.

Still, you’ll find these essays tend to return to the same events and the same ideas over and over again. But each time we revisit them our perspective shifts—the same way reality in the series is constantly shifting—letting us interpret old events, old ideas, in new ways. As each writer passes the torch to the next, our contributors cover new ground while pushing our understanding of the Hunger Games as a whole further, toward a greater awareness of everything these books have to offer.

While editing this anthology, I was alternately surprised, fascinated, and moved to tears—a tribute not only to the Hunger Games series itself but also to the talented YA writers whose work is collected here. And I hope that you, too, will find something fresh to feel or think about in these pages—that
The Girl Who Was on Fire
encourages you to debate, question, and experience the Hunger Games in a whole new way.

 

 

The Hunger Games is, without question, a great series. Millions of readers have stuck with Katniss Everdeen through three books, two rounds of Games, and a war—and still can’t get enough. If you’re reading this book, then none of this is news to you. But what is it about this dystopian story that draws in readers of all ages and genres? Why have these books enraptured a generation? It’s no easy question to tackle, but Sarah Rees Brennan suggests some very compelling answers.

 

 

A
s you can tell from all the atrocious puns in the title, this essay will be studying the elements in the Hunger Games trilogy that inspire its tremendous popularity. It’s fascinating to analyze the mixture of elements that has caught readers’ imaginations around the world. What is so alluring about the Hunger Games’ particular mixture of adventure, romance, and philosophy? Many of the elements present in the series are familiar, so how does Suzanne Collins make it all seem fresh and compelling?

For a long time I avoided the Hunger Games because, well, I’d seen
Battle Royale
, thank you very much. (
Battle Royale
is a Japanese movie, based on the book of the same name by Koushun Takami, about high school students who are chosen by lottery to kill each other under new legislation introduced by a futuristic government.) I finally buckled under the weight of hearing everybody’s enthusiastic recommendations for six months, and then I read the Hunger Games voraciously and was extremely annoyed when interrupted by such inconsequential things as “Christmas dinner.” (God, Mom, did you not understand Katniss was being pursued by the mutts? You have several children, why does it always have to be about collecting the whole set all the time?)

So my assumption made an ass out of me, and I missed out on the Hunger Games for six months! My reason for avoiding the Hunger Games really was ridiculous, as we all know there are no brand-new plots under the sun: what really matters is the way you tell the stories and the passion you have for them.
Battle Royale
, as I’ve said, deals with children killing each other for the benefit of an audience and with the sanction of the government.
Ben Elton’s adult comic novel
Dead Famous
, in which a murder happening on a reality TV show drives up the ratings and makes the show a phenomenon (and it turns out the producers planned it all along), deals with many of the same issues of human fascination with reality television, violence, and the question of how illusion can mingle with reality.

So there are no new ideas under the sun, and, if you ask Christopher Booker (author of
The Seven Basic Plots
), only seven plots in the world. What is it about Suzanne Collins’ treatment of the idea that has struck such a chord with readers? A writer friend of mine, Justine Larbalestier (author of
Liar
), described the Hunger Games books as “sticky,” meaning that they are compulsive reading. Once you have picked them up, it’s difficult to stop reading: your attention does not wander, and your urge to find out what happens next does not falter.

Why is that? One reason is how deeply the Hunger Games goes into the questions of reality versus illusion and the examination of the media’s current fascination with manufactured reality, as well as humanity’s enduring fascination with violence. The idea of children killing each other is a horrible one to anyone, and yet so morbidly alluring. The evil presented by the Hunger Games is so terrible, and in this society so all-encompassing, that we watch Katniss’ adventures with instantly evoked sympathy, horror, interest, and simple terror—because we cannot imagine how she is going to get out of this situation. Another thing that kept me reading compulsively was sheer interest in how the novel is structured: how does Suzanne Collins allay the very bleak premise of the Hunger Games enough so that we are not all carted, weeping softly, off to a lunatic asylum in the middle of
Catching Fire
, and how does she keep her characters sympathetic even when they are almost all, by necessity, murderers?