Morgan Adderley October 17, 2013 ENGL1111 Musselman Project 1 Draft 1 Citation Style: MLA Word Count: 1,473

In Defense of the Mockingjay I have never been someone who was super obsessed with the whole time-capsule thing. Sure, the idea of leaving something behind to be discovered by yourself or someone else decades later is cool enough, but honestlythe odds are higher that your precious little lunchbox filled with action figures, handwritten notes, and other relics of that era in your life will end up in a landfill somewhere, instead of being discovered by people who are super excited to know what your favorite childhood book was. Now Im not trying to be pessimistic, but I the reality is Im a college student in the middle of midterms, so Im not in the most idealistic mood at the moment. But my assignment is to write a book review for my peers one hundred years from now. So assuming that this essay makes it all the way to October 2113 (wow, that year doesnt even look right), my sincerest greetings to you all. If by chance any of you are related to me, you should know that your great-great grandmother was a pretty awesome lady. But before she was Nana, or Grandma, or whatever it is were calling such things in a century, she was freshman student at Northeastern University, the year was 2013, and she was writing about a book called The Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games was a 2008 young adult novel by American author Suzanne Collins. I must admit, I passionately loved this book. It is set a few hundred years in the future (so closer to your time than mine, dear reader) in Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America (The Hunger Games). However Panem is nothing like the U.S. as I know it today and hopefully as you know it. Panem is a dystopia consisting of thirteen districts organized around a Capitol. The Capitol demands all the resources and labor of the districts, causing the people who live there to have to work incredibly hard for basic human needs. They eventually dissented, however the Capitol squashed this rebellion like a trivial bug. In retaliation for their behavior, District Thirteen was obliterated, while the remaining districts were forced to participate in a horrific event known as the Hunger Games. Every year a boy and a girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen is randomly selected from each district as tributes for the Games. They are then taken to an inescapable arena, where they are forced to fight to the death. To make matters even more disgusting and cruel, the games are nationally televised and are treated as nothing more than a TV drama. They are considered to be a huge source of entertainment by the citizens of the Capitol, while the people of the districts must helplessly watch their children be slaughtered by other children. The protagonist of the book is sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen, and the novel begins when her twelve year old sister Prim is reaped for the Games. Katniss selflessly volunteers to take Prims place, and the rest of the book follows Katniss experiences inside and outside of the arena. Yes, the premise is deep, but I must admit- the book is amazing. Collins handles such heavy waters with effortless style, pacing, and finesse. Some background for you, reader: the first few years of the 21st century were dominated by young adult, or YA, books that took the world by storm. The first major series was the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, followed by

The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer. Both were later turned into multi-million dollar movie franchises. The Hunger Games, the first novel in the Hunger Games Trilogy, was published just as the craze over these books was calming down. And boy was it something different. No magic or fairytale creatures here, the only forces of good and evil in this book were purely and undoubtedly human. The subject matter must have been too deep for some adults, because the book has been challenged or banned numerous times. Do they still ban books in your time, reader? Do they still have books in your time? By that I mean, in their traditional, physical form. I would like to think so, though I could see all the technological revolutions making them obsolete, or incredibly rare. But yes, censoring or banning books has been done for hundreds of years, and I suppose will continue into the future. Authority figures like governments, community leaders, religious figures and parents will always try to squash ideas they believe are harmful. I, however, am wholeheartedly against the notion of doing such a thing. I love books, I love stories, and I love the written word. I believe that the choice of what to read and what not read should lie in the hands of the individual, unless that child is incredibly young. In which case, the book should still not be banned. Parents should simply discuss what they think is wrong with the story. Books tend to be challenged for moral (violence, sex, obscenity), religious, or political reasons. However, these are all a part of our everyday lives. I understand that some subject matters are a lot for some people, but what are we going to do, ban the news? What I see on stations like CNN and BBC has troubled me far more than any story I have ever read. And of course, let us not forget about the children, the teens, and the people who have lived through far harsher realities than anything a writer could create.

Author Sherman Alexie picks up on this, in Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood, when he states, I have yet to receive a letter from a child somehow debilitated by the domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, poverty, sexuality, and murder contained in my book. To the contrary, kids as young as ten have sent me autobiographical letters written in crayon, complete with drawings inspired by my book, that are just as dark, terrifying, and redemptive as anything Ive ever read. (Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood). These children have lived through their own experiences of negative circumstances, and for many of them, reading about similar situations can be cathartic. Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins certainly knows about writing from experience. According to Susan Dominus Suzanne Collinss War Stories for Kids, [Collins] grandfather was gassed in World War I, and her uncle sustained shrapnel wounds in World War II. Some of Collinss earliest memories are of young men in uniform drilling at West Point, where her father, who later made lieutenant colonel, was on loan from the Air Force, teaching military history. When she was just six years old, her father left to fight in the Vietnam War. According to Sparknotes, war was something very real for Collins, and not just an abstract idea. It is also a reality for millions of American children, whose parents or siblings are in the military, or, as Alexie notes in his article, are of age to join the armed forces themselves. And although this is sad, I am certain war and conflict will continue to be a part of life a century from now. In fact, Collins got her idea for the novel one evening when she was flipping between footage of the Iraq War and a reality TV show.

Future readers, reality television is to the beginning of the 21st century what the sitcom was to the latter part of the 20th. It relies heavily on the idea of voyeurism, watching other people, and offers up real life as entertainment, and in doing so it turns real people into commodities. Their value becomes determined by how much entertainment they provide, and as such they lose their identities as people. Reality television, the novel suggests, is a form of objectification (Sparknotes). Suffering as entertainment is just one theme in this incredible novel. Honestly, Collins manages to pack a ton of social commentary in this little book. For all the parents who still insist that this book is too far removed from their childrens lives, another theme is the disparity between the rich and poor, or the Capitol versus the Districts. Or, we could call it the disparity between the richest 1% (who own 40% of the wealth) versus the rest of the populationespecially the poverty stricken. There are over a billion starving people world over. Even in America, food insecurity is still sadly, and ridiculously rampant. Future reader, one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. Unfortunately it does not appear that this goal will be achieved anytime soon. Hopefully by your time it has been. But in my world, and Katniss, it has not. According to the American Library Association, The Hunger Games first appeared on the banned books list back in 2010, when it took the fifth place spot. During the next three years, the entire trilogy moved to the third place spot, with as many as 326 attempts to challenge the book in 2011 alone. The list of complaints include: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence. And I majorly disagree. The only issue I can see what has any relevance whatsoever is that of violence. The novel features quotes like, the boy from District 1 dies before he can pull out the spear, and My arrow drives deeply into the center of

his neck. He falls to his knees and halves the brief remainder of his life by yanking out the arrow and drowning in his own blood. This is not your traditional bedtime story, I understand that. But future reader, the violence in the books only serves to remind you of the setting, of the gravity of the situation. It is never incessant, and definitely never insensitive. The book features incredible characters, the most important of which is Katniss. I do hope it is better in 2113, but in 2013 strong female action heroes are much less commonplace than they should be. Katniss, however, is an incredible one. She is selfless, hardworking, and resourceful and never ever loses her humanity. Peeta, the deuteragonist, is equally admirable. In a world where teenagers are the main audiences for slasher movies and terribly violent video games, The Hunger Games stands out as a major proponent of why violence is so terrible, and what happens to a world that becomes too desensitized to it. I fully believe that this novel has important lessons for anyone, in any time period. Not only that, it is a really good book. I literally dreaded having to put it down, and I am proud to be one of the 50 million people who have bought the books. You, future reader, would not regret doing the same.

Works Cited 1. Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic Press. September 2008. 2. Alexie, Sherman. Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood. http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/06/09/why-the-best-kids-books-are-written-inblood/ . June 9, 2011. 3. Dominus, Susan. Suzanne Collinss War Stories for Kids. The New York Times. April 8, 2011. 4. SparkNotes Editors. SparkNote on The Hunger Games. SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2012. Web. 1 Oct. 2013. 5. Sieczkowski, Cavan and Spurlock, Chris. Banned Books Week: Top 10 Most Challenged Titles Of The Year (INFOGRAPHIC). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/30/banned-books-week-top-10_n_1926829.html?utm_hp_ref=book . September 30, 2012

Acknowledgements: 1. I would like to thank my classmate Erin Binnie for reading over my Fact Sheet 1, and discussing the background context of The Hunger Games with me. 2. I would also like to thank my classmate Michael McKain, who read my Fact Sheet 2 and discussed the whole idea of banned books with me.

3. I would also like to thank my friend Chelsis mother, Constance Gibson, who helped me
access my personal copy of The Hunger Games novel, by bringing it from my home when she arrived for Parents Weekend at Northeastern University.