Hunger Games Craze

"Destroying things is much easier than making them"-Katniss Everdeen

I balked and balked at reading The Hunger Games. I held out as long as possible to forego reading the Twilight series and finally fell victim to temptation, with disappointing results. Sure, I read them and even reread them but I didn't even watch the entire of Eclipse when I saw it in theaters and have yet to see a glimpse of Breaking Dawn. On another note, I haven't touched the Harry Potter series. They never ever interested me and I saw the same thing happening with The Hunger Games, so I prided myself on not relenting to peer pressure.

Until Savannah (my RA turned great friend) essentially FORCE fed the book to me. She is majoring in elementary education and reading aloud is excellent practice for her future profession so she begged me to allow her to read the book to me. She was only halfway through, so she started, with a little backstory to help me along, at the point where Peeta professes his love for Katniss to all of Panem. Instantly, I was hooked. I literally hung on every word, staring her down when she paused at the end of each chapter until she turned the page. 10...14....17....19, the chapters flew by. Finally we stopped for some mandatory sleep, even I couldn't stay up much past 3:30 with a 9:30 class hanging over my head. 
We read more the next day and finally finished the book last night. We screamed at the appearance of the tributes-turned-wolves and cried when Claudius Templesmith reversed the rule change. There is something about hearing a story that invokes so much more imagery and I crafted a picture of the arena in my mind, so vivid that I could probably map it out. 


As I listened I reluctantly began to see some cunning political commentary placed by Ms. Collins. Normally, I am entirely indifferent to politics but I couldn't help but notice the allegories and Savannah and I had a total political epiphany when she shouted out, "WE are the Capitol!" And we (America, the first world) are. We watch the evening news for entertainment, we see the suffering and HUNGER present in less fortunate countries. We send out a silver parachute every now and then, in the form of charities like Water4 and Samaritan's Purse, but that is merely a basic application of salve. Nothing longterm. 


I'm not sure what I want to do with this realization. But I don't think that it is something that can be ignored. Until then, I'm reminded that I'm A Very Lucky Girl.