The Hunger Games Review

I would like to take a look at the reviews for The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. All of the reviews were found on the Barnes and Noble website, but they all come from different sources. The Hunger Games is about a post-apocalyptic World in the future where the main character, Katniss, is forced to compete in the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is an event established by the dictatorship they all live under where one boy and one girl are chosen from each district (there are 12 districts) and they are forced to go into an arena and fight to the death. Katniss chooses to take her sister’s place in the games, by volunteering. She and a boy from her district, Peeta, go to the arena to fight all other 22 tributes to the death. The Hunger Games are a widely popular television show throughout Panem (the country).

One review for The Hunger Games is found in Publishers Weekly and was written by Megan Whalen Turner. The direction she decides to take with the review is a plot summary first. She spends two paragraphs with plot summary, and then decides to analyze some key things about the book. She starts off by analyzing why the Hunger games were a televised event. She says that the fear of reality television is the fear of our generation. The fears of other generations were runaway science, communism, overpopulation, and nuclear wars. She thinks our main fear today is reality television. I do not think I agree with this. She may have just said this for the purpose of her review, I cannot think of any other reason. We have many other things to fear today, like global warming or terrorism. I think that is what defines the fears of our generation, not reality television. I have never even heard of that being a legitimate fear of this generation.

She proceeds to talk about how this World Collins creates could become a reality and we need to watch out for that. I do not agree with that either. I think the purpose of Collins writing these books was to protest war. Her father was either in a war or a protester of war, and taught Collins about peace and resistance to war. That is what I think these books were really about. I do not think we need to worry about our society becoming like the one in the book any time soon.

I think that this book review was interesting. She was definitely voicing her own opinions and not really considering many others. She had a good flow from topic to topic, and her word choice was eloquent, but I do not agree with her review. I think it is interesting how different her interpretation of the book can be to mine. I think that means the book could mean many different things to many different people. I wish she would have talked more about the actual book than the fear of reality television.