Why Suzanne Collins Is One of the Best Authors: A Hunger Games Review

       The Hunger Games trilogy is a book series that needs absolutely no introduction, with roughly 100 million copies sold worldwide, three (soon to be four) movies that did phenomenal in the box office, and a worldwide fanbase. It would be more shocking if you’ve never heard of any of the books or movies before instead of if you had, and that’s saying something. The first book of the trilogy: The Hunger Games was published September 14th, 2008 by Suzanne Collins, and the moment it hit the shelves, readers fell in love. The story follows sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen throughout her life in District Twelve and how she sacrifices her life to save her younger sister, Prim Everdeen, when she was chosen to fight in the 74th Hunger Game. The Hunger Games trilogy has the reader constantly at the edge of their seat with the grueling details and descriptions that allows the story to play like a movie in your mind instead of just seeing words on a piece of paper. Every character no matter how relevant has a realistic and reasonable personality causing the reader to get so connected to a character it’s as though you’ve known them. But why do so many people feel this way about the book(s)? What is it about Collins’ writing style that makes people fall in love with everything she mentions? Well, that’s what I’ll be talking about today. 

First of all, let's start with one of the arguably most notable and easy to spot things in her books: the use of first person. Usually, just about every single book you pick up will be in some sort of third person narrative, following the characters as though you’re on their shoulder watching them react to situations and only getting their thoughts every once in a while. I, like many others, are used to this kind of writing style so every time a book is written in first person it can either immediately spark curiosity or stray the reader away, possibly causing the book to be dropped instantly. Which is why I was shocked to see that the Hunger Games trilogy was written all in first person. We as the reader follow Katniss as though we are her, sitting at the back of her mind, experiencing everything she does without any control of, supposedly, our own actions. The usage of first person allows a kind of closeness with Katniss that really made her stick and feel as though I was looking back upon memories of a life I’d never lived. I feel a kind of connection with Katniss just by being in her mind and now I can understand when people say that the movies never hit your heart strings the way the book did. There is no way to truly tug a reader’s heartstrings if you’ve never been inside their mind to see how they tick. 

But, it’s not only about Katniss. The book series engages a multitude of characters of all different backgrounds, looks, and moralities, allowing the reader a certain closeness to not only the characters in the book but also the community itself. We meet many characters all throughout the book from District Twelve to the Capitol. We learn how they prefer their food, how they interact with the world around them, and how many people they cherish near and dear to their hearts. Usually, when books name dump it almost feels suffocating. Names of different people come and go randomly until, eventually, names and faces swirl together so you can’t discern who’s who. But when Suzanne Collins writes none of this happens. We get so close to each character that their names are engraved into our heads and even if for a moment we were to mix someone up Collins would write in memories, moments, experiences that only that character and Katniss have had to even out the curling lines. People we meet in the first book keep making appearances either physically or through memories, every character’s name and description tells us of where they lived, how they lived, and how much longer we’ll have them close. We learn of the closeness of the people in District Twelve not because we’re told but instead because we experience such connections, and never let them go. 

The Hunger Games trilogy creates connections and bonds I’d never thought were possible for a reader and a person made of paper to have. Every character’s name I drink up as though I’m a dehydrating man wandering the desert. Every description from a character’s eyelashes to the food on the dining room table I grasp onto as though they’ll try to run away from me. People and places get engraved into my mind creating a closeness between character and reader that I’ve only ever experienced in real life. I feel such a strong connection towards Katniss and the people in her life that whenever someone gets injured or goes unmentioned for too long I immediately assume the worst and keep my jaw clenched expecting the blow to come. Suzanne Collins molds a world so realistic and exact that I fear to pick up another book only for it to pale in comparison in regards to the pure amount of connection between reader and character. I fear that if I ever read another first person book again I’ll be so worried about comparing them to the woman I come to know as Katniss Everdeen that the actual book will be nothing more than background noise. But at last that is the bitter-sweet gamble that every reader should be willing to take.

Image Supplied by the Hunger Games Wiki

https://thehungergames.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hunger_Games_trilogy

-Jordan

Utopia; A “perfect” World

Sophie La Nave

Dr. O’Brien

Language and Literature 2

October 14, 2023

Utopia; A “perfect” World

Utopia by Thomas Moore, page 45: “If you permit the young to be viciously brought up and their characters steadily crafted from early years, and then at length punish them for doing as adults what they have been destined for since childhood, what else is this but turning people into thieves and then punishing them for being such?”

When Thomas Moore puts it like that, it seems to feel as though everything has a simple cause and effect. It seems as though the perfect world; a utopia, would be so effortlessly simple. It makes it seem as though we can find a reason, a justification for everything.

 In this case, Moore states that it is the fault of the government under which children have been brought up poorly educated, and driven to steal, that they have in fact become thieves. He earlier stated that people steal mostly out of necessity, which I think we see in our society as well. In a society in which food, healthcare, and other necessities for life are a privilege and not a right, of course people are driven to steal. Of course the society that forces people to steal must also punish them, because the people stolen from also face the consequences of the thief's actions. However, such simplistic ideals cannot directly apply to our society, because our system isn’t built just on the interactions of a few people. Our late stage capitalist society is built on corporations not people; it’s built on people, built on people, built on people. It’s easier for people to steal from corporations because they hoard money. It’s easier to steal from systems rather than people. Moore still believed thieves should be punished, just not as harshly as they often were; not with death. I wonder if Moore would agree with the punishment thieves serve today. In Utopia, Moore explores the idea in which the punishment for thievery should be equal to the action(eg. If you steal a man’s gold, you owe them what you stole), but at the same time, they should be marked a criminal, and live a life of continuous rehabilitation, a life of servitude- with their ear cut off. They can buy back freedom, but it’ll take time to save up, and of course they’ll always have the mark of a criminal. 

In a utopia; a perfect world, everything seems so simple. An action happens with an equal reaction, but we’re too human for a perfect world. Even with a perfect system, as humans, we cannot follow through. We, as imperfect beings, cannot live in a system that serves perfect people. The reason certain idealistic systems of government don’t work is because of our humanity. Our greed causes us to spoil “perfect” systems, and our capacity to only know how we ourselves as individuals think causes us to believe we are unique, special, or exceptions. This thought of our uniqueness allows for us to break rules we assume others will follow, or come up with things we think no one else has thought of. We are, of course, wrong. So, if we break a rule, others probably will too, or already have. We are the downfall to our own existence, but we are also the only thing that keeps us alive. Moore believed in a utopia, but a perfect world isn’t possible. Even if a reaction to a problem is equal to the problem itself, a perfect world wouldn’t have problems, and not everyone will enforce the same rules in the same way. As much as we would all love to live in a perfect world, we cannot live in a non-existent plane. Utopias do not exist(sorry Thomas).

 

Akata Warrior: Nobody actually texts like that.

Don't get me wrong, the concept that Akata Witch introduced was a very intriguing one. The story's fantasies along with the mysteries of the lurking serial killer amongst the town creates an interesting story that you want to know more about. Who is the killer? Why are they killing innocent children? How will Sunny put an end to this monstrosity? Wow, this book is just so hard to put down! But, in reality, the only thing I wanted to do was put it down. The way Nnedi Okorafor uses Sunny as a character that people can resonate with while introducing the story's fantasy is a fabulous concept. Or, at least, it could've been a fabulous concept. Sometimes I while reading that Akata Witch created a world that was too ambitious for its own good, which eventually ended up with a story that was more than it needed to be. But, with that, I decided to take Akata Witch's sequel, Akata Warrior, off of the shelves to give the series another chance. 

It was only a few chapters in, and I noticed the book's lack of a hook. Chapter after chapter, I begun getting more and more bored as the book dragged on without any sort of point of interest. No murder? No mystery? At least not yet. I decided not to jump to any conclusions before I got deeper into the story. Upon flipping through the book some more, I made my way to page 34. This is when I saw the monstrosity that is older people trying to understand the texting trends of younger generations:

 "U kno u interested, cuz u kno I show you a gud time" was, word for word, the text message that Sunny's brother sent to his girlfriend on page 34. (Okorafor 34). In what world would anyone text like that? Apparently this one. Not only does Akata Warrior's fantasy land have juju magic, spirit faces, and books that grow legs and walk around like spiders, but it also has the absolute corniest text messages of all time. I'll admit, us "young-ins" tend not to text like journalists. We usually skip letters, simplify words, or use abbreviations to save time. But, in no universe would I ever use the term 'gud' or 'kno' and I think most people my age would agree with me. Not that Akata Warrior's poor understanding of texting ruins the book, but it was still a strange encounter. 

I won't label Akata Warrior as bad or good just yet because I'm far from deep into the story. It would be unfair to characterize it simply because of a corny text message. However, through the pages that I've flipped through so far, I'm beginning to think it's not much better than Akata Witch. As I said before, Akata Witch attempted to be more than it needed to be. By the end of the book, I felt that there were so many loose ends and unanswered questions that even the book's underwhelming finale was worse than it had to be. After I closed Akata Witch, I questioned the relevance of a lot of the things that the book told me, because it seemed that only a select few plot points were actually necessary to understanding the story. I don't plan to continue reading Akata Warrior, at least for now. But, if I ever do, I hope that it fixes the issues that I had with the first installment, and I also hope Sunny's brother sticks to phone calls for the sake of my sanity. 

Nnedi Okorafor, "Akata Warrior", published 10/3/2017.