Food insecurity—given the effects of global climate change and inflation—is such a widespread challenge today, it's my contention if you wanted to achieve best-selling status among young adult ("YA") readers—you could not do better than have your novel star a 15-year-old young woman character who faces hunger every day of her life, and who acts illegally every day to feed her family by hunting small game in a forbidden forest. Why? Because being an illegal hunter so her family won't starve, when combined with her tremendous self-reliance and determination, garners Katniss, the star of The Hunger Games, instant hero status.
Notice, Suzanne Collins, named her novel The Hunger Games. She could have named her book The Fight-to-the-Finish Games or The Gladiator Games, but she didn't. She featured hunger first and foremost on the title page. Why?
My thesis is that by choosing to call her novel The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins had a bestseller on her hands from the title page on, because food—from eating disorders to food security—is on the minds of so many young people. Even those who never have to give a second thought as to where their next meal is coming from, instantly admire a person like Katniss who provides for her family by hunting every day even though she's only fifteen years old. I certainly would. Wouldn't you?
It's important to say, in Collins' fantasy country of Panem, there are a dozen districts, yet only one of the districts is filled with abjectly poor, truly hungry people—District 12, the one in which Katniss lives. It's the poorest district of them all. So, it's not exactly The Hunger Games for the other twenty-four participants, but it is for Katniss. The young man who becomes her partner, whose first name is Peeta, also comes from District 12, but happens to be the son of a baker, so he's never been truly hungry in his life. Plus, the other twenty-two players (two from each district) don't know every-day hunger the way our heroine does.
My point? For Katniss it's truly The Hunger Games far more than it is for any other participant, although it's true that withholding food is one of the strategies the "game makers" use to get the participants to want to fight and kill one another.
The second part of my thesis is that our hard-scrabble, hunt-to-feed heroine is only where Katniss' journey begins. What makes her so appealing is that she's an emotional chameleon, rapidly adapting to changing game requirements in order to win the advantage over her opponents. She shows tremendous resilience.
She makes a unbelievably rapid adjustment to consuming what to her just one week earlier would have seemed like a glutinous amount of food. She also adjusts to being noticed by everyone for having earned the highest score when she is interviewed by the judges. She adjusts rapidly as the other players begin to begrudgingly respect her cleverness. For example, she adjusts to her mentor, Heymitch's fall-down-drunk antics, and in the process actually persuades him to be her mentor. He helps her succeed.
In her little bubble, as part of "The Games" she "goes viral," but she adjusts to her hero status at the speed of light. I think that's one of the things about her that makes her so appealing to so many young readers. Of course she's largely a fantasy, but how could you not admire her for her curt, witty observations, and her spirit as she starts to come into her own.
When she allies herself with the clever Rue, she and Katniss are faced with having too much food other players could steal from them. When Rue asks, "…how would you get rid of it?" Katniss answers, "Burn it. Dump it in the lake. Soak it in fuel." I poke Rue in the belly just like I would Pym (Katniss's younger sister) "Eat it!" She giggles. "Don't worry, I'll think of something. Destroying things is so much easier than making them."
What wisdom from a 15-year-old!
I think what happens to us, the readers of this book, is that we change. We want Katniss to win so badly; as new aspects of her personality emerge and come into focus, we accept them as part and parcel of Katniss. We become seduced into believing that young lady, the lean and hungry one, as she was described as being in chapter one can be so much more. We lose sight of that Kitniss and accept her as we see her now, because that's how we want to see her. In other words, we fall in love, and our judgment becomes blurred.
Perhaps that's Katniss's formula for success in winning The Hunger Games, and it's also Suzanne Collins success formula for winning with her novel. We never once question how Katniss can possess a personality and an intelligence that absolutely flowers over the course of a mere two-hundred-seventy pages and a passage of time that extends no longer than two weeks. Because we want her to win that badly. Such is the magic of fiction when twenty-four people are all running for their lives, and you already know the two you want to be victorious. Why, Katniss and Peeta, of course! You start rooting for them, and the next thing you know, they win! And—get this!—they're hungry no more. What a happy ending.
