Morgan Adderley October 17, 2013 ENGL1111 Musselman Project 1 Final Citation Style: MLA Word Count: 1,709

The Hunger Games, War, and Banned Books When I entered Northeastern University two months ago, I experienced quite a culture shock. My major is International Affairs, so not only did I have to contend with being in a new city, in a new school, surrounded by new people, I also had to process a barrage of new information about my world. This included learning about intra- and interstate relations, dictators, wars, famines, food insecurity, government operations, and other global issues. All this showed me just how sheltered and privileged my life is. No, it is not perfect, but I am not hungry, can afford higher education, and have a strong family support system. No abuses have been meted out to me, and while I realize that there are people who would discriminate against me because of my skin color, religion and gender, such issues have not had much of a direct effect on me. Sadly, for billions of people around the world, my life is nothing but a dream. What about for you, future Northeastern Husky? As a member of the 216th entering class, how similar is your world to mine? I would love to believe that many of these issues have been done away with. In my Globalization class, we learned that there are actually less interstate wars today than there were a century ago. Most conflicts happen within countries. Thus I think that by

2113 states would have stopped handling crises with each other through war and violent tactics. Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Interpol, and others would have perfected helping states work out problems in a peaceful manner, and would hold governments accountable for treating their own citizens with respect. War has had quite a profound effect on the life of American author Suzanne Collins. Her 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 (Suzanne Collinss War Stories for Kids). Collins did not grown up with the romanticized view of war many people often have, but the gritty, terrible truth of the horrors humans are capable of. One evening, she was channel surfing between news coverage of the Iraq War and a reality show. The lines between the two blurred, and the idea for her novel The Hunger Games was born. The Hunger Games is a young adult book which is set centuries in the future. The United States has become Panem, a totalitarian state which is divided into twelve districts and a Capitol. The Capitol citizens live in luxury, while the people of the districts slave away to provide them with the comfy lifestyle they enjoy. As if their misery is not enough, the Capitol forces the districts to participate in the annual Hunger Games. Every year, each district must submit a teenage boy and girl as tributes to fight to the death in the Games. Only one can survive. To make matters worse, the games are televised, and seen as a major source of entertainment by the people of the Capitol. The novel begins when sixteen year old Katniss volunteers to take her baby sisters place in the Games.

When Collins published The Hunger Games in 2008, it received critical acclaim and ended up selling over 50 million copies. It spawned two sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay, which saw the events of the first book result in revolution in Panem- the districts rising up against the Capitol and the government. These two novels became bestsellers as well. In 2012, a movie version of The Hunger Games was released and became huge success as well, grossing over $691 million worldwide. Unfortunately, the books violent premise has sparked much controversy, to the point where it has been challenged or banned. 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. The Nazis thought that books were so dangerous that they held a massive book burning in 1933. What is scary is that this campaign was organized by university students, just like you and me dear reader. It is not only adults who can enforce oppression and censorship. We have power too, and we have to decide how we will use it. For the students of the German Student Union 1933, it was to help a racist party carry out one of the worst atrocities in human history.

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 326 attempts to challenge the book in 2011 alone. The list of complaints include: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence. The only issue I can see which 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. Okay, this isnt exactly a bedtime story. 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 Hunger Games also 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 ridiculously rarer than they should be. Katniss, however, is an incredible one. She is selfless, hardworking, 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. To me, banning books is silly. I believe that the choice of what to read should lie in the hands of the individual. If this individual is a child who is incredibly young, the book should still not be banned; instead parents should simply discuss what they think is wrong with the story with their children. Books tend to be challenged for moral, religious, or political reasons; however, these things are all a part of our everyday lives. I understand that some subject matter

is difficult for some people to handle, but what are we going to do, ban the news? A current issue in the world is the Syrian Civil War. Over the past few months, I have watched news stations like CNN and BBC report how President Bashar al-Assads regime is responsible for murdering, torturing, starving, and terrorizing men, women, and children. Nothing killed me more than hearing the stories of how Assads snipers are targeting pregnant women, and the images which were released of fetuses with bullets lodged in their heads On August 21, 2013 Assad regime forces killed approximately 1400 people in the Ghouta region with chemical weapons. These types of weapons are considered so vile that their use was prohibited at the 1925 Geneva Convention. Assad used these against his own people. The death toll stands at over 100,000.

This, this is the world we live in. This is what human beings are capable of. This is what happens in war. I am sorry but this image horrifies me more than any book ever can, or ever will. Or, at least I can live with the knowledge that a book like The Hunger Games is fiction. The above photo is real life. We should be rising up and protesting about that, not some story!

So, 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 notes this midway 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) But for all the parents who still insist that The Hunger Games is too far removed from their childrens lives, another theme in the book 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% (which possesses 40% of Americas wealth) versus the rest of the population- especially the poverty stricken. Today, there are over a billion starving people in the world. Even in America, food insecurity is sadly still rampant. 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. I believe that books are incredibly important. They teach, they inspire, and they can be a source of hope, and thus they should never ever be banned. Katniss showed me that a sixteen year old girl can change the world. Malala Yousafzai proved to me that they can. At eighteen years old, surely you or I can do the same.

Works Cited Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Press, September 2008. Print. Alexie, Sherman. "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood." Speakeasy RSS. N.p., 9 June 2011. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Dominus, Susan. "Suzanne Collins's War Stories For Kids." Nytimes.com. N.p., 8 Apr. 2011.Web. 19 Oct. 2013. Sieczkowski, Cavan, and Chris Spurlock. "Banned Books Week: Top 10 Most Challenged Titles Of The Year (INFOGRAPHIC)." Huffingtonpost.com. N.p., 30 Sept. 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. Sephton, Connor. "Syrian Snipers shooting Pregnant Women in the Stomach to Win cigarettes." Metro Syrian Snipers Shooting Pregnant Women in the Stomach to Wincigarettes Comments. N.p., 19 Oct. 2013. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. Bates, Robin. "The Burning of the Books." The Burning of the Books. N.p., 24 Nov. 2010. Web. 30 Oct. 2013.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my classmate Erin Binnie firstly for reading over my Fact Sheet 1, and discussing the background context of The Hunger Games with me; and then for reading my first draft of this essay. She gave valuable criticism. 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. Finally, I thank Constance Gibson, who helped me access my personal copy of The Hunger Games.