Friday, September 27th, 2013 Reading Response The book I am reading is Catching Fire written by Suzanne Collins.

The genre of my book is Dystopia. Dystopic novels often have a cruel and overpowering government and the people suffer from hunger, lack of choices, and dignity. It can also be set in the future. In Catching Fire, the government forces children to fight and televises it on TV. People are starving of hunger, because the government takes away their food, hunting is illegal (but Katniss does and Gale gets whipped for being caught hunting), and most of their food is sent to the Capitol. The only way for people to get extra food is by volunteering more than once for The Hunger Games. Citizens have no choice about whether or not they participate in the Games, which shows the lack of choice they experience in their lives. Catching Fire is very similar to other the Dystopic novel Divergent, because they are both set in Dystopias. For all of these reasons, Catching Fire is clearly a Dystopic novel. If I were to have colours represent Catching Fire, I would choose black and white. Black represents darkness, mysteries, depression, devastation and death. District 12 is a diseaseridden, dangerous, poor place to live. People live in fear which leads to depression and death. Citizens are scared of the

Capitol, which is the government. The Black Market is often the only way for them to survive. Katniss father died in a mining shaft explosion, which would have been a very dark time. Death is everywhere. The Hunger Games is a cruel way to have children and past winners kill each other for the enjoyment of the viewers. Many families have lost family members to accidents, starving to death, and the Capitol sentences people to death or slave labour, or mutilate them instead of sending them to jail. White can be seen in this world because it symbolizes hope. Peeta has hope of winning because her father believed that she would be able to win the Hunger Games. Hope is also when Katniss won the Hunger Games in the first book and the second book is about her returning to the world that she came from. White also represents plainness and dull, which is seen because every day for the citizens is the same the focus is always on survival, getting food on the table and staying out of reach of the Capitol. For all these reasons, the world of Catching Fire is clearly represented by black and white.