The Hunger Games

By turns, The Hunger Games reminded me of “The Most Dangerous Game,” Gladiator, Ender’s Game, and The Truman Show.

“The Most Dangerous Game” involves a big game hunter preying on another man for the challenge — the game — of it. Gladiator recalls the bloodthirst of the Romans, who thought murder and mayhem were good sport. Ender’s Game features a talented, slightly underdog hero whose wits as a gamesman we come to admire in a corrupt futuristic world. And The Truman Show gives us a caricature of our own shallow, dehumanized, voyeuristic entertainment culture.

That being said, there’s not much else to say without giving it away altogether. (Most folks have read it already, but I’m going to skip the plot summary just the same.) This book offers lots of opportunity to think about what happens to young people, or people in general, in a violent world. Entertainment itself becomes a means through which a military state inflicts its agenda on its citizens.

These aren’t the only comparisons the story invites. Molech. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Theseus and the Minotaur. 1984.

Though I liked this novel and thought it was very readable and well-paced, it didn’t hit me as hard as I expected. Maybe all the association, instead of making it richer, made it seem like a mere intersection of other books and movies. I, who don’t ever do that well in strategy games, could predict what was going to happen most of the time. Or maybe it was the Forrest Gump phenomenon: by the time I saw that movie, it couldn’t possibly live up to all the hype. I seem to get to some books and movies too late, with impossible expectations.

Still, I liked it, grim though it is. I see why it has won such acclaim. In a clean and interesting way, it gives young adults something like the night vision glasses the heroine of this story wears to see at night: a lens for reading our own culture in ways that might lead to greater freedom and meaning. I recommend it, and I’ll read the sequel for sure.