Read The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion Online
Authors: Lois H. Gresh
The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (6 page)
Third, the so-called elite classes vote for rebellion. This is similar to the second criterion: The vast majority of people join forces and try to overthrow the repressive government. If the intellectuals are with the cause, so much the better. In the case of The Hunger Games, it’s hard to point to an intellectual class because everybody has been subjugated to such a large extent. However, there are some people who might be considered in the intellectual class—possibly Mayors; Peacekeepers who don’t torture citizens; the Head Gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee, who is in a secret organization hell-bent on overthrowing the government (
Catching Fire
, 385); inventors such as Beetee; anyone (other than Coin and her cronies) in District 13. For Seneca Crane, Head Gamemaker before Plutarch, he had a “sentimental streak” and didn’t kill Katniss during the poison berry episode, and hence, according to President Snow, the government had to kill him (
Catching Fire
, 20).
Fourth, a serious crisis paralyzes the ability of the repressive regime to use force against the people. These crises may take the form of economic collapse, no jobs, no food, too much war, corrupt leaders, an elite upper stratum that has all the money and power. Need I point out the corollaries with The Hunger Games, not to mention the current (as of February 2011) rebellions throughout the Middle East?
Finally, a major rebellion may be imminent if no other global government intervenes to help the people. Nobody from anywhere else in the world helps the repressed people of Panem. In fact, we don’t know if anyone exists outside of Panem because they’re never mentioned in any of the three books.
As noted in chapter 1, “The Hunger Games Trilogy,” Suzanne Collins provides a couple of clues about her apocalyptic scenario. She tells us that the government leaders feared war or complete destruction of the Earth’s atmosphere (
Mockingjay
, 17). She tells us that the seas swelled and swallowed much of the land of North America to form a much smaller Panem, that there were “droughts” and “storms,” and finally, a “brutal war” over any remaining food sources (
The Hunger Games
, 18). As postulated in chapter 1, it’s possible that Collins was alluding to the melting of the ice caps due to climate change. The clue is in the swelling of the seas to the point where the continent becomes much smaller. If the entire world is flooded by the melting of the ice in Greenland and all of Antarctica, the seas may rise two hundred feet.
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Without going into the entire scenario suggested in chapter 1, if we assume that the sea swells dramatically affected all of the civilization just as it affected North America, then we can also assume that the survivors elsewhere are busy trying to find sustenance and stay alive just as they did in North America after the apocalyptic event. Further, given that Collins supplies no reason for us to believe that global satellite communications still work or that undersea cables have survived the climate crisis, it’s safe to assume that communications with survivors on other continents are severed. Shortwave low-bandwidth radios would still work. Ships could still sail the high seas; but, with global starvation and meltdowns, diseases may also be rampant, which would limit the desire to communicate via ship or any other means with other continents. The bottom line is that Suzanne Collins does not tell us why the apocalypse occurred, nor does she spell out what happened to the rest of the world.
James DeFronzo, Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut, summarizes the five criteria needed for rebellion as: mass discontent; elite dissent; unifying motive; state crisis; and world permissiveness.
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He provides global evidence that attempted revolutions lacking one or more of these factors tend to fail.
In the United States at present, people are increasingly discontent due to factors noted earlier in this chapter: unemployment, no hope for jobs, losing their homes, etc. Banks have collapsed, the economy is tanking rapidly. Republicans fling dirt at Democrats. And Democrats fling dirt at Republicans. Nobody wins. The homeless are still homeless, the starving are still starving, the uneducated are still uneducated. The cost of higher education is through the roof. The country is fighting wars on multiple fronts and at great expense, yet the government is so riddled with debt, U.S. treasury notes are actually
losing
money. There seems to be no solution to the nation’s ills.
What will happen is anyone’s guess.
We’ve witnessed the USA PATRIOT Act, the bizarre Total Information Awareness proposal, John Ashcroft’s super-secret detentions, and the Guantanamo incident. (And, oh yes, some time ago, we had Nixon’s “plumbers” and the Watergate Tapes, and the Joseph McCarthy Red Scare era, not to mention George W. Bush’s weapons of mass destruction fiasco.)
The USA PATRIOT Act assaulted the civil rights of Americans by allowing the FBI to look at records about anyone they want without going to court first. Yes, they can view your medical records, financial records, Internet use, travel history, lending library records, and just about anything else. They can tap your phone and read your e-mail.
The Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) was a program that President George W. Bush devised that would encourage people to spy on their family, friends, and neighbors. This smacks of the Stalin era, doesn’t it? Or the McCarthy era. Luckily, Congress nixed the idea.
Face it, we have very little privacy in this country. The Total Information Awareness (TIA) project can put us all under the government microscope. Its aim is to create ultra-huge databases containing all information about people. It is run by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Among its many creepy features, it works toward covertly tracking where you go and what you do—without your knowledge.
Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union note:
Privacy and liberty in the United States are at risk. A combination of lightning-fast technological innovation and the erosion of privacy protections threatens to transform Big Brother from an oft-cited but remote threat into a very real part of American life. We are at risk of turning into a Surveillance Society.
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The authors point to the extensive data mining that’s already happening, as well as to the potentials of microchips embedded in our skin, and something they call brain-wave fingerprinting. Surveillance cameras
are
everywhere, watching everything we do. How different are these cameras from the ones used in
Mockingjay
? As Castor points out, the Capitol government has surveillance cameras on every street; further, the Capitol knows when and where to attack the rebels because they watch everything everywhere (
Mockingjay
, 281).
In the real world, face recognition software is used in airports. The government can trace everything we do on the Internet. They can read our e-mails, listen to our phone calls. Databases in federal agencies contain a wealth of information about citizens. The Justice Department uses ChoicePoint,
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a data aggregator, to collect personal information about citizens.
If the banks fail, if the economy totally tanks, if people all remain unemployed, if the inequities continue or
grow
, we face criterion number one for rebellion, mass discontent.
If politicians continue to bicker, party against party with no remedies in sight, just bickering among the rich and powerful, the intellectuals will dissent as they did during the Vietnam War. We will face criterion number two, elite dissent.
If the first two happen, then we have a unifying motive.
Sadly, the government faces crises on all sides: messed-up economy; poor education for students; lack of housing; homeless people; collapse of banking and auto industries; closing of factories and production of goods in this country; and wars, wars, wars.
As for world permissiveness, what country will step up to the plate and help the United States if we collapse into civil war?
And what if that civil war happens, and a government rises that subjugates the masses with Dark Days to keep them in line so the people don’t rebel again?
My personal opinion is that it will
not
happen. Misguided as I might be, I retain a belief in the backbone and strength of the United States, that we will somehow rise above the current messes and make ourselves strong again. I retain some small hope that our government and corporate leaders will put the people’s interests and well-being before their own pocketbooks. Jobs, education, housing, health . . . if strong leadership with ethics and morals takes a stand and does what’s right, maybe there’s hope. In his inaugural address in 1961, President John F. Kennedy said, “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” I don’t think he had in mind the notion that our government and corporate leaders would pad their bank accounts while letting the rest of the country slope toward poverty and hunger; for if our leaders were thinking about what they could do for the country, they’d be considering its future, in short, its
children
.
In hoping for the best, perhaps I’m simply too naïve. But if I don’t think this way, then I’ll have constant nightmares, just as Katniss has nightmares. I don’t think we will ever pit children against children in gladiator games. But I wonder what people thought before the Romans instituted the Games? Did people like me, mothers and mild souls, think such atrocities could never happen to
their
children in
their
civilized societies?
The Hunger Games series makes us think about issues like this, and for this reason, among many others, it’s a very powerful fictional work.
2000–1600
BC
, PersiaPeople have been foretelling the end of the world, the apocalypse, since the dawn of time. Ancient prophets gathered large followings by warning that everyone was doomed, the end was near, the sky was falling. For the most part, the doomsday predictions proved false. Though if we wait long enough, perhaps they’ll spin around toward truth.
The ancient prophet Zarathustra, often known by his nickname Zoroaster, hailed way back to early biblical times. This was around the time that Abram, most commonly known as Abraham, was wandering around Canaan and northern Egypt with Sarah and Lot. According to the standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament, Abraham lived between 1812 BC and 1637 BC and died at age 175. Various scholars place his birth and death at different times, but for the most part, it’s agreed that Abraham lived in the first half of the second millennium BC.
Zoroaster spawned a religion, Zoroastrianism, and also appeared on the cover of a famous book by Nietzsche,
Thus Spake Zarathustra
. He was a nomad and prophet in what is now Iran, and when his people faced death at the hands (and clubs and knives) of rival tribesmen, Zoroaster begged one of his most powerful gods, Ahura Mazda, to save his kinsmen. Along with prayers and chants, Zoroaster believed that Ahura Mazda would save his people during an all-out raging annihilation war, an apocalypse, during which good (his people) would win over evil (his rivals). The post-apocalypse result would be a perfect, peaceful, harmonious world for his people.
HNGER VERSUS STARVATION
Hunger grates on the people in District 12. It grates on almost everyone who doesn’t live in the Capitol of Panem. Hunger is a constant theme in
The Hunger Games, Catching Fire,
and
Mockingjay
.