Well, Bethany takes the cake this year with most timely AND most entertaining Christmas gift. Didn’t see this series coming at all, and I was not disappointed. Here they are – the ten reasons The Hunger Games Trilogy should push aside every other book on your “next to read” list:
10. It was a #1 New York Times Bestseller.
This isn’t much in my book but it’s enough to make the number ten spot. Capital gain indicates few valuable things, but here’s one: commitment. Enough people found enough interest in these three books to buy it more than any other at one point – for a sustained amount of time. Because of this – because the American people succumbed to their hunger for the games – it rose to the top.
9. Susanne Collin’s writing style mimics much of Americana.
This will pain me to say, but it’s true: I prefer Collin’s style to Rowling’s. For those of you who know me, that’s saying a lot, but Americans will accept the tone, tenor, and content of the Hunger Games over Potter. I love the Vonneguts, the Twains, the McCarthys and the Kings - they do one thing many other writers in many other cultures (including parts of this culture) won’t do. They tell it like it is.
My mother, whom I have asked to read Harry Potter for YEARS will be able to pick up the Games faster than you can say Hungarian Horntail three times fast. Collins sounds brash, salty, honest, naked, aggressive, fast, and powerful in her prose. Whatever else those descriptors point to, it’s toward Twain and away from Chesterton.
8. When’s the last time you read a good Dystopia?
Think about it. Movies don’t count (Book of Eli for instance). Some might counter with The Road, but the general populace has a bit more hope for humanity than McCarthy. Narrow the field to a tenth-grade reading level and what do you get?
Nothing much. Last one I read was The Giver by Lois Lowry, and that was back before I had a locker. Dystopias, as a mix of satires and fantasies, help us both to critique our current sitz em laben and to imagine alternative futures. I believe- and you’ll hear me say this over and again – that the two most efficacious literature genres are fantasy and satire. That is, if you’re writing to change anything – politics, people’s minds, your own mind, emotions, stages of grief, etc. – the most effective thing you can write is satire or fantasy. The Hunger Games does both, critiquing the world we know and live in - 2011.
7. Literary Alchemy Transforms the Three Books
It’s not as simple as black, white, red. I can spot black, white, red just about anywhere – including Iron Man 2. It’s the fleeing deer, the taste of blood and roses, the toads and snakes and golden cornucopias that lead me to believe Collins studied esoteric alchemy. Looking for another character like Harry who goes from a common being to a holy, divine, pure being? Check out Katniss of the Hunger Games.
6. It’s SciFi, but I can Sync it with My Brain
There are days when I want to read about proton torpedoes, moisture farms, hyperspace, negative gravity, white holes, quadrants of deep space or lightsabers. When I do, I pop in Star Wars.
For the days I don’t – the other 362 out of the year – I need something relatable, something I can believe, something I don’t need an intergalactic dictionary or hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy to understand. Hunger Games delivers. Most every foreign object or animal brandishes a name that goes to something else in our world. Instead of “Stormtroopers” or “starfighters” we have “Peacekeepers”. Instead of “asteroid mines” or “black-matter bombs” we have “pods” or even “booby traps.” It’s easy to understand, it’s simple, and it sucks you in like a black hole. Don’t misunderstand me, it’s a future dystopia, not a space odessy, but the potential for lost-in-translation still exists.
5. Traditional Christian Symbolism In the… Hovercrafts?
My atheist friends will hate me for this, but I have one of their own to back me up. If you’re reading this, then you’re influenced by the English language. Outside of the old Welsh, Scottish, Eireish, or Cornish tales that we barely have record of, the majority of the English canon until very very recent history remains Christian. To use Christian imagery provokes emotions for Christians and English alike. Does English = Christian? No. But Christian imagery helps Anglos understand what’s happening and being said in a given narrative.
The baptisms, the dark nights of the soul, the harrowing hell moments, the crucifixion scenes, and the resurrection motifs all weigh heavily on the plot. Not to mention some of the fantastic beasts of Christian Tradition. Keep a copy of Harry Potter or Narnia nearby to catch the phoenixes and the unicorns – they’re a lot more subtle.
4. Men Can Relate to a Tried-and-True Feminine Character
This might sound tough to preach, but Katniss actually taps into the survival-need-for-appreciation-respect-earning-honor-preserving bone in every guy. Some guys cut two, three or five of those modifiers but at least one of them hits every guy. If Collins had created another Bella Swan, I would have returned this Christmas present to any and all takers – including Wal-Mart. The angsty love-triangle alone was enough to turn me off, but you know what kept my attention?
The visual, external, world-wide struggle that Katniss represents. For some guys, that will take the form of her bow-hunting skills (don’t you dare start quoting Napoleon Dynamite Jean, so help me). For other men, it will look like her inner fire that actively ignites all sorts of gut-check reactions to the world. This alone held me through the love triangle AND enabled me to understand the feminine psyche a little more. Katniss, for all of her active pursuit, is still a woman. As a woman, she tends to do things then evaluate them later. The book spills over with”Why am I saying this?” and “How did I get here?” thoughts of the main character. This, for good or bad, seems to be a distinctly female thing. If you’ve read the books, you know exactly what I’m trying to say. If not, read them before critiquing this paragraph. I’m disinterested in uninformed cynicism.
3. Children’s Literature’s Better than that Prose You’re Reading
Philosophy? Psychology? Self-Help? Theology? Philology? Political Science? Drag the list on for days if you like, the truth is every single person can tell me about Hickory Dickory Dock’s rodents and what those mice did. Some of this may seem irrelevant, until you consider that Dr. Suess critiqued the entire cold war in one of his sing-song rhymes. Lewis rebuked M. Tolkien threw back the veil on spiritual warfare. Chesterton taught us about the Sabbath through terrorists and detectives. Baum exposed the gold standard and the entire economy through Oz. Sr. Thomas Mallory showed us the pangs of his own imprisonment, showing us the potential of society through Morte de Arthur. Oh, and there was that one Galilean peasant – what was his name again? – who became the world’s most revered, respected, worshiped, and imitated man in history simply by changing the endings to bedtime stories and wives tales.
It’s time you dropped that tome of monotonous polysyllabic solipsisms and picked up a fairy tale. Why not start with Hunger Games?
2. Time for a Trilogy
Star Wars. The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo. LOTR. Most of the great stories we remember come in threes. They introduce us to this new world, or new family, or new rule for life in book one. They change the rules, or show the darkness behind the world in book two. They resolve the conflict in book three. It’s simple. It’s holistic. It’s timeless.
And it’s less than seven books.
1. The First Amerable
This sums up the previous nine, and adds one more. I’m always interested in doing what Jesus did with the parables – taking the stories of my people and changing the ending enough to help us think through the implications of our actions. Collins, for one of the first times in full unapologetic tones (without being full-out Vonnegut) takes the traditional American stories and turns them on their head. She uses subversion and one other thing:
Nonviolence. If you’ve ever searched for practical ways to resolve, confront, and attack conflict without using violence, Collins presents several moments – key to the story – where nonviolence resolves the issues, and in healthy, well-written ways.
If you haven’t picked up a copy, go do it as soon as you can.
