hunger games book 1 essay

The Hunger Games

By suzanne collins.

The Hunger Games Summary

The Hunger Games details the adventure of Katniss Everdeen , who is forced to engage in a fight-to-the-death tournament against other children. The novel takes place in Panem, a dystopic country built on what was once North America. In a world of limited resources, the despotic government run by the Capitol keeps its citizens in line by separating them into Districts and reinforcing severe class separations. But their strongest tool to promote disunion and to discourage rebellion is the Hunger Games: a yearly event where two tributes from each district are pitted against each other for the country to watch on television.

Katniss lives with her mother and younger sister Prim in District 12, the poorest of the districts. Ever since her father's death, she has been the family provider, hunting illegally in the woods outside the district with her friend Gale. The novel begins on the day of the "reaping," when each District must select two tributes, one male and one female, to represent them in the Hunger Games. When Prim is selected as the female tribute, Katniss offers herself as volunteer and is allowed to serve as tribute alongside Peeta, a middle class boy from the district.

The remainder of Part One of the novel follows the children as they are both trained for the brutal games and groomed to portray a certain image for the audience. She forces herself into a stoic determination to win, a philosophy made difficult by the kindly Peeta. The relationship is made even more fraught when Peeta confesses during a live interview that he has a crush on Katniss. Though she fears making emotional connections that could compromise her desire to win, she agrees to portray the image of a unified front, an idea proposed by their sponsor Haymitch.

The Games are held in an arena in a forested area. When they begin, Katniss rushes away from the excitement of the initial bloodbath and uses her hunting/survival skills to develop a strategy. She sleeps in trees and hunts game. Each night, faces of the dead are broadcast into the sky. As she stays hidden, she learns that Peeta has allied himself with the "Career Tributes," those tributes from the richer districts who train their entire lives for the Games.

Meanwhile, the Gamemakers , those who design the Games, continue to manipulate the surroundings in order to keep the Games entertaining. After a severe burn following a firestorm, Katniss is trapped in a tree above the Careers. That night, she makes contact with Rue , the youngest tribute, who Katniss associates with Prim. Rue is up a nearby tree and suggests she defeat the Careers by dropping a wasp nest on them. She does so, in the process getting stung herself but also scattering the Careers and gaining for herself a bow, her strongest weapon. The wasp stings produce hallucinations, which slow her down and almost cost her her life, until Peeta helps her to escape. She is understandably confused.

Katniss and Rue form an alliance and make a plan to destroy the supplies that are keeping the Careers powerful. Rue sets fires to distract them while Katniss pieces together that they are protecting their supplies with landmines reappropriated from a Gamemaker design. When she uses the mines to explode the supplies, she is blown backwards and knocked out of commission for a few days. She returns just in time to see Rue killed by another tribute, who then quickly becomes Katniss's first kill. As a small act of rebellion against the Capitol, which expects the tributes to dehumanize one another, Katniss sings to Rue and decorates her corpse with flowers before the body is fetched by the Capitol.

The Gamemakers announce that the rules have changed, and that the two tributes from a district can serve as co-victors. She then finds Peeta, who was cut badly after helping Katniss escape the Careers. She does her best to help him recover, but it isn't until Haymitch sends her a gift following a kiss she shares with him that she understands that playing up the romance angle could pay off.

They spend days growing closer in a cave, but Katniss lacks the skill to cure Peeta's wound. When the Gamemakers announce that a "feast" will be held to draw the tributes together for crucial supplies, she tricks Peeta and heads to the feast. In trying to get her gift, which she assumes is anti-infection medicine for Peeta, she is almost killed by a Career, but saved by the other tribute from Rue's district. Having heard of Katniss's kindness towards Rue, the tribute lets her live.

The medicine cures Peeta, and they spend more time growing closer in the cave. Once the Gamemakers dry up their water supplies, they prepare themselves and head out to face Cato , the only other surviving tribute. But their main challenge turns out not to be Cato, but several wolf-man creatures unleashed by the Gamemakers, creatures reanimated from the corpses of dead tributes. Katniss and Peeta escape by climbing to higher ground, while the other tribute falls and is tortured by the creatures. Finally, Katniss kills the tribute with her arrow out of mercy.

They have won the Games, but the Gamemakers rescind the rule about dual victors. Peeta and Katniss threaten to commit dual suicide, which would ruin the Games, and they are hence awarded a dual victory.

They are fetched by the Capitol representatives, and separated for a long period of recovery. When they are brought out to the audience again, Haymitch warns Katniss that she needs to overplay the lovers angle as a defense for her threat to commit suicide, which the Capitol considers an act of rebellion. Over the period of fanfare that follows, she takes his advice, which makes Peeta, who actually does love her, very happy.

When all is done, they head back to District 12, and Katniss lets slip along the way that her affection was always for the cameras. Though not the entire truth, she is torn between her old identity as a poor hunter, and the more complex one she shaped through the Games. Peeta is heartbroken, but understands they must maintain an image as they prepare to present themselves to their district.

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The Hunger Games Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Hunger Games is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Why did Peeta side with the tributes from Districts 1, 2 and 4?

He sided with the Careers to better their chances of finding Katniss and killing her, due to her 11 score in training. It's quite unusual for the poorest of the districts to score such a high number in private training. Because she's from District...

Katniss lists four reasons why she should trust peeta?

1) he risked a beating to give her bread 2) he steadied her in the chariot 3) he covered for her with the Avox girl 4) he insisted Haymitch know her hunting skills

In The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, was Lucy Gray Baird the one who came up with The Hanging Tree?

I believe so. Coriolanus Snow thought that the song was written for Billy Taupe, her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with the Mayor's daughter but he realized that the song was written for him.

Katniss' father I believe told her the song but...

Study Guide for The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games study guide contains a biography of Suzanne Collins, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About The Hunger Games
Character List

Essays for The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

The Danger of Ritual and Tradition in "The Hunger Games" and “The Lottery”
Feminist Studies of Experience in The Hunger Games
Defining and Defying Female Stereotypes: A Comparison of Charlotte Temple and Katniss Everdeen
New Social Order
Trust in the Hunger Games

Lesson Plan for The Hunger Games

About the Author
Study Objectives
Common Core Standards
Introduction to The Hunger Games
Relationship to Other Books
Bringing in Technology
Notes to the Teacher
Related Links
The Hunger Games Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Hunger Games

Introduction

Bradfield Senior College Library
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Text and analysis

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins:Text and analysis

Books and downloadable chapters, bloom's literature online, journal articles, journal articles - dystopian novels, online videos, related texts.

Referencing

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Education links

NESA HSC English Syllabus This site includes past HSC exam papers, the subject syllabus and notes from the marking centre.

Bloom's literature : Suzanne Collins The biographic entry for Suzanne Collins from the Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction. more... less... TAFE NSW username and password required
Love Among the Ruins : How our awful future became the next big thing. By Lev Grossman. Time, 3/12/2012
Dystopian novels : have you read one lately? Library Media Connection, Aug/Sep 2012
Wikipedia : The Hunger Games A short summary of the books in The Hunger Games trilogy.
The Hunger Games : Wikia A fan created community wiki site devoted to books and film adaptions of The Hunger Games trilogy. It includes sections on characters and plot.
Cliff notes : The Hunger Games With sections on characters, chapter summaries and analysis, this site provides a useful overview of the novel.
Time : PANEM's rebel : The star of the 74th annual Hunger Games A mock propaganda issue of Time Magazine promoting the 74th Hunger Games. It usefully demonstrates the manipulation of image and information in the world of Panem.
The New York Times : Scary new world (book review). By John Green. 7/11/2008 A review of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and The dead and the gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer.
The Artifice: The political message of The Hunger Games This article examines the political, social, cultural, and environmental messages contained in The Hunger Games.
Revisiting Dystopia: the Reality Show Biopolitics of "The Hunger Games" (Academic article) This paper explores the dystopian imaginaries of the trilogy The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and its film adaptations. It places the narrative into a genealogy of dystopian fiction concerned with the historical nation-state totalitarianism.
The Hunger Games: An ecocritical reading (Academic article) This academic paper argues The Hunger Games "Recognises that the degradation of non-human nature through human action" as a major theme. It suggests a deep reading of this multilayered text "can broaden as well as change perspectives and trigger engaged debate". The paper also covers the critical issues of "consumer manipulation, media and celebrity culture".
“In hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge”: Belly, bellum and rebellion in Coriolanus and The Hunger Games trilogy (Academic article). By Sara Soncini. Essays No. 15 05/2015 This article examines the link between Shakespeare’s Coriolanus and the shortage of food as ferment for rebellion in the districts of Panem.

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Last Updated: Oct 18, 2024 12:46 PM
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The Hunger Games Essay Examples

Review of the movie the hunger games.

The portrayal of a grim and disturbing future is usually the main goal of many dystopian fiction stories and “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins is certainly no different. The intense and almost uncomprehendable plot is what draws the audience in to watch this parable...

Comparing the Using of Techniques in Hunger Games and Divergent

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The Review of Suzanne Collins' 'The Hunger Games'

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"The Hunger Games" Fim Analysis: a Possible Revolution of the Future

The 2012 film adaptation of the Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins, is a post-apocalyptic tale about the country of Panem. Panem is divided into 13 main sectors: districts one through twelve, and the Capitol. There is a distinct hierarchy within the country which is...

"The Hunger Games": Katniss and Peeta Relationship

The Hunger Games, authored by Suzanne Collins, is a dystopian novel that has captivated readers worldwide. One of its central themes is the evolving relationship between the main characters, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark. This essay delves into the intricacies of their relationship, exploring its...

Human Instincts as Idea of Reasoning: "The Hunger Games"

Humankind is intricate, we have ongoing themes associating us; clashes isolating us and wars pitting us against each other. Be that as it may, we are still human. We may not all think alike on a surface level, but further investigation of Human Nature uncovers...

Literary Analysis of the Hunger Games by Susanne Collins

Susanne Collins wrote the book The Hunger Games In 2008. She aimed it at young teenagers, specifically 11 to 13. The author used many writing techniques to show the theme of survival. Collins uses Allusion toward Joan of Arc, Katniss is like her because she...

Hunger Games Reflection: a Critical Analysis of the Capitol's Control

For my second quarter book report, I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, originally published on September 14, 2008. This book is set in the country Panem, in which is District 12, The Capitol, and the arena. The significant history is eloquently stated in...

Suzanne Collins’s the Hunger Games - Book Review

You need to stand by what you believe no matter what happens, broken laws, people who don’t believe the same thing you do. Don’t get knocked down or get discouraged. Katniss Everdeen changed her world by doing what. Doing something no one else would. Biting...

The References and Motivations of Suzanne Collins in the Hunger Games Trilogy

One of the most important topics that Suzanne Collins chose to write The Hunger Games trilogy (2008-2010) is the critic to the capitalist system. According to Afiani (2015), the class struggle which is reflected in the trilogy is seen as the vehicle to criticise the...

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About The Hunger Games

2012, directed by Gary Ross

based on Suzanne Collins's 2008 novel "The Hunger Games"

Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Primrose, Gale Hawthorne, Effie Trinket, Haymitch Abernathy, Caesar Flickerman, President Coriolanus Snow, Cinna, Seneca Crane, Glimmer, Cato, Clove

The nation of Panem is divided into 12 districts, ruled from the Capitol. As punishment for a failed revolt, each district is forced to select two tributes, one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18, to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games until there is only one survivor.

The main themes in The Hunger Games include friendship, family, freedom and oppression, and materialism.

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