Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Blurb:

The first novel in the worldwide bestselling series by Suzanne Collins!

Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Review:

Happy Hunger Games! And MAY the odds be ever in your favor!

Hey folks! This is a bit different than my normal style of review. BUT I think you will still enjoy it! It is also, chock full of spoilers, so if you haven’t read them yet, might I suggest you come back after you do??

The first time I read Hunger Games must have been right before the movie came out, and I inhaled them. After reading the new Sunrise on the Reaping, I knew I wanted to go back and reread these with my tabs and look for little moments I might have missed the first time or things the movies couldn’t fit in!

So here we are, 10 years, and 2 prequel books later. 

MAY (the odds be ever in your favor) seemed like a good month to re-read them. And you know what, it is! Katniss’s birthday is May 8th!

The parents

Katniss’s parents met because her father would sometimes grab medicinal plants while he was out hunting, and he brought them to her mother in the apothecary shop. Katniss notes that her mother must have loved her father a lot to leave the Town and move to the Seam with him. Seeing their deep love, and how Katniss’s mother delt with his loss, is a perfect foreshadowing of her defense of the berries, “I CANNOT IMAGINE LIFE WITHOUT HIM”.

Katniss’s dad teaches her all her essential skills, how to hunt with a bow and arrow, how to collect edible plants, and she can sing like he did too. He showed her how to get the Mockingjay’s to sing back to her out in the meadow when she was young.  

When she starts embracing the star-crossed lover’s angle, she recalls her dad bringing her mother gifts from the woods, and the way her mother’s face would light up when he came home. AND HOW SHE ALMOST STOPPED LIVING WHEN HE DIED. Peeta catches her hand and presses it against her lips, and Katniss has a brief memory of her father and mother doing the same thing, and wonders where Peeta picked it up.

Peeta tells Katniss that his dad knew her mom when they were kids. Much later we come back to this, and the baker seems to have enjoyed Katniss’s dads singing too, saying “even the birds stop to listen” and then Peeta recounts the first time he heard Katniss sing. 

Peeta’s dad, the baker, comes to visit Katniss before she is shipped off to the capital (we never hear anything nice about his mother).  He says next to nothing, and this has always been an interesting interaction, to me. Why is  it here?? Was he there because he wished she was his daughter? Or because his son was going?  He gives her a bag of cookies and offers to keep an eye on Prim and make sure she’s eating. To Katniss it means people love her sister, and Prim will be looked after. 

Later she throws those cookies off the train, and they land in a patch of dandelions, once again reminding her of Peeta and her survival, and therefore her debt to him.

When we get to Katniss saying “Then you shoot me. You shoot me and go home and live with it.” We know Katniss is thinking of her mom, and how it will feel. When Peeta unwraps his injured leg trying to bleed out, I wonder how much suffering he saw his father endure. That he would choose his death, rather than life without her. 

The Rebellion

The first mention of rebellion I notice is on page 5, Katniss stores the bow and arrow her dad made in the forest since it would cause trouble in the district.

Next, the audience at the reaping doesn’t clap, they give her a 3 fingered salute. 

“Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.” 

Haymitch is staggering drunk at the reaping and accuses the crowd and the cameras of having no spunk, pointing a finger directly at the camera as if accusing the capital. 

Madge gives her a pin from her own dress, and doesn’t make a big fuss about it, but puts it right on Katniss’s dress.  We learned in Sunrise on the Reaping whose pin this was back in Haymitch’s day. The bird is a “slap in the face” to the capitol, and Katniss’s father loved the birds while they were out hunting, he would sing to them. This connection to the rebellion and the singing and her father right at the beginning is great.

“You’re not afraid of fire are you Katniss?”

Cinna MAKES her the girl on fire. She is from the coal district, but we hardly see any coal from her in her time there in the book. The chariot fire, and Cinna (again) is the one that tells them to hold hands, “Just the perfect touch of rebellion” Haymitch says after, and when she thinks about this see begins to see how presenting themselves as friends instead of adversary’s makes them more HUMAN to the capital crowd.  Later, Haymitch instructs them to never leave each other’s side in training. 

After Rue’s death, Katniss thinks of Gale raging against the Capitol, but doesn’t think she can do anything, until she thinks of what Peeta said.  That he wants to show them that they don’t own him. She finally understand what that means, and dresses Rue with flowers. 

Thinking more and more about the star-crossed lovers play, even if Peeta won, he set himself up to be removed from the joy of winning, as he would have won at the cost of her life. 

At one point, Katniss realizes that if she wins, she will have to mentor a child next year, and the thought is so abhorrent I love that the author has something else selected for book 2. 

The Love Triangle

First things first, I love a good love triangle. You know what really makes this one work? She has intertwined them all so well, the characters Gale and Peeta never interact in this book, not once. BUT, the first thing Gale give Katniss?? Literally on page 7? It’s a loaf of bread. WOW, the boy with the bread is PEETA, the connection was staggering, to me. 

Bread is a love language.

When Katniss recalls the story of how Peeta gave her the bread that saves her life, she talks about the next day at school where their eyes met for a moment, when she looks away she sees a dandelion, which gives her hope (and I just see it symbolizing survival), and a new idea of how to keep her family fed. 

Gale removes Prim from the stage at the reaping, Katniss knows that Gale will look after her. This calms her. Gale has somewhat replaced her father as a hunting partner, and his companionship made her a better hunter, he gave her a place to be happy. 

After Peeta tells the audience that he loves Katniss, she shoves him, and he petulantly calls Gale her boyfriend, which she again denies. As soon as the games start, and Katniss gets somewhere relatively safe, she is overwhelmed by thoughts of Peeta’s demise. 

When she replays the conversation with Gale about running away from before the games, it leads her back to Peeta, and that he saved her life! She briefly, almost comically quickly, thinks about how Gale might have interpreted Peeta saving her. 

As she’s going to get Peeta’s medicine she wishes Gale were with her so he could have her back. When Peeta is good enough to walk he is so loud that it startles Katniss, and she wishes Gale were with her because he’s quieter. 

She kisses Peeta quite a few times, hoping for sponsors, some to get him to eat, others to stop his arguing, but once she does admit that its just for her.  She’s just glad he’s with her and she doesn’t have to face Cato alone. In the end, Peeta is the one who shows Katniss how to defeat Cato, and then when the mutations are taking too long, he asks her to end his suffering. When they finally win, they are separated for medical treatment, and Katniss is pounding on the walls for Peeta and screaming his name. 

On the way home the train stops and Peeta gives Katniss flowers, but they are really the tops of wild onions that only remind her of Gale and the hours they spend in the meadow together. 

“I take his hand, holding on tightly, preparing for the cameras, and dreading the moment when I will finally have to let go.” 

The Prim/Rue Connection

“Prim!” The strangled cry comes out of my throat, and my muscles begin to move again. “Prim!” I don’t need to shove through the crowd.  The other kids make way immediately allowing me a straight path to the stage. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me.

“I volunteer!” I gasp. “I volunteer as tribute.”

The emotional impact of this scene will never cease to stop me in my tracks. She got there in time for Prim. But Prim’s reaction in the book is strong and equally moving:

Prim is screaming hysterically behind me. She’s wrapped her skinny arms around me like a vice. “No, Katniss! No! You can’t go!”

Rue and Prim both use herbs and plants to take care of people, Rue heals Katniss’s stings, she uses the same leaves her mother and Prim use. 

Rue’s dress for the interview with Ceaser is a gown with wings, and it reminded me not only of her age, but that Katniss calls her sister “little duckling.” And how she loves her more than anything. Later Katniss says that Rue can “ fly around like trees like you’ve got wings.”

Rue tells Katniss she loves music more than anything, which is how we once again come back to the Mockingjay’s and Katniss’s dad. When Rue lays dying, because Katniss was just a moment too late. She sings her a song about a meadow, and tells her she loves her. 

When Katniss does meet up with injured Peeta later she notes how much a better help Prim or Rue would be for him.

Thresh lets her live because she worked with Rue, and when he tells her they are even, it brings back the boy with the bread memories. Though, when she tries to explain this to Peeta it all comes out wrong and he gets upset. She tries to explain that she did it for herself, because she worries what it would be like to go home without him. And how much she doesn’t want to lose the boy with the bread. 

Stuff I had forgotten!

• Gale has two little brothers!

• Peeta is funny – “Really, is anything less impressive than watching a person pick up a heavy ball and throw it a couple of yards. One almost landed on my foot.” And “Yes, frosting, the final defense of the dying.”

• Madge was another friend of Katniss, she visits her in the room before she is taken away to the capitol. Her father buys strawberries from Katniss and Gale, and her introduction in the story allows the author to describe the tesserae. Which is how lower income families can make ends meet, for a higher chance of being chosen in the reaping. A very sore point for Gale and Katniss. 

• Madge gives her a pin from her own dress, and doesn’t make a big fuss about it, but puts it right on Katniss’s dress.  We learned in Sunrise on the Reaping whose pin this was back in Haymitch’s day. The bird is a “slap in the face” to the capitol, and Katniss’s father loved the brids while they were out hunting he would sing to them. Later, after discarding those clothes, Cinna presents the pin back to Katniss who forgot it was even on her clothes (he’s such a rebel). 

• Peeta is noted to be good with a knife by the Careers. 

• “He tells the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America.”  That’s wild to me, and I don’t know how I ever forgot that!!

• There is an avox servant on the train that Katniss recognizes.  She wished she could have helped, but can’t imagine how she would have done anything.

• They have night vision goggles!

• The boy from district 3 reactivates the plates that they started on, this is what blows up the food. 

• Katniss thinks about how once she and Peeta are in the final 8 the tv crews will be interviewing friends and family. I wonder so much about these interviews!

• Katniss’s first, and only real kill is the boy who killed Rue, she does it so quickly that she doesn’t even think about him being a person.

• District 11 sends Katniss bread, it’s the first time a district has sent a gift to a tribute who is not their own.

• Peeta tells Katniss that she and Haymitch are exactly alike.

• Katniss bought Prim a goat, and the whole story was very sweet. Gale carried the goat cause he wanted to see a happy Prim as much as Katniss does. Peeta compares himself to the goat and promises to pay Katniss back for saving him.

• The Gamemaker’s wanted to surgically alter Katniss, but Haymitch threw a fit.  But the compromise meant Cinna added lots of padding to her dress’s chest. 

• Katniss drugs Peeta so she can go get his medicine in peace, but as she does, she sees what she has done is unforgivable.

• They really set up the ultimate fight to be Katniss vs. Cato, but Foxface was very close to winning!

• The mutations have the tributes eyes! And in an alarming train of thought, Katniss wonders if they have their memories too.