Good morning everyone! Welcome back to my deep dive discussion of The Hunger Games. I wanted to go into something a little more analytical this week. Something to focus my brain before I charge into some of the more personal and emotional topics of the next few weeks. My sleep schedule is a wreck, so pour yourself a cup of coffee alongside me and let the 74th Hunger Games begin!
Chapter 11:
And so after 60 seconds, the gong will sound to begin the Hunger Games.
Something interesting I’ve picked up as advice from various writers and authors is that a moment of tension or action should last about as long as the actual event. If you shorten a moment to only a few sentences, it could be difficult to understand the situation unfolding. But on the alternating end of the spectrum, if you draw out a perilous, tense, or horrifying moment too long, you can quickly lose the reader’s attention. And if too many of these moments stack, your book becomes a pacing nightmare. This is a fine line, and there are also, as with most things, exceptions to this rule depending on the situation, characters, or perspective.
And so I had a thought. How accurate is the “as long as the actual event rule” in The Hunger Games? I’m not a slow reader by any means, so obviously this actual time will vary from reader to reader. However, I did find it interesting that reading from the moment chapter 11 starts to the moment the gong sounds took me exactly a minute and 8 seconds. Pretty spot on when you take into account different reading paces and factor in having to go back to reread a word or skipping over a section on accident.
It’s an interesting concept, and I do wonder what would happen if I applied this to other books I read.
Katniss spends her 60 seconds giving us a brief description of the land around her. A flat stretch of ground, a forest, a lake, and the cornucopia, which is a giant golden horn full of resources that will be of help in the games. Katniss argues with herself whether to go for a bow she sees at the mouth of the cornucopia, but due to her puzzling, misses her moment.
After a brief struggle on her way to collect a backpack, Katniss escapes with the bag, a sheet of plastic, and a knife. She makes her way far from the other tributes, and begins her search for water, which was the second instruction she received from Haymitch, her mentor. Before night falls, she climbs a tree and hides inside of her black sleeping bag she found in her backpack, which provides excellent camouflage and warmth in the darkness.
Katniss’ edge for survival is showcased yet again as she sets snares for food, thinks to hide up high where she can’t be easily seen and has the luxury of sleep, and knows not to do things like start fires.
We have varying degrees of knowledge on the other districts during the Hunger Games books. Probability, differences in supply needs, and logistics aside, the 3 career districts’ children are allowed to train from a young age at what we understand to be primarily combat and strength. The vast majority of the other districts are impoverished, and know little of combat or survival. Katniss has quite the well of knowledge on both despite her youth due to time spent with her father, Gale, and her own trial and error.
We see a bit more of Katniss’ internal conflict about Peeta when she learns he isn’t on the list of deceased tributes during the first day. While her desire to win and return to her loved ones spurs her on, she has no want to kill a boy she feels she owes, and she knows if she were to die, Peeta’s win would help her family most.
Katniss awakes several hours later to the sounds of branches snapping from another tribute starting a fire. The career pack descends on her, and the chapter ends with Katniss hearing Peeta’s voice coming from the career pack.
Chapter 12:
I don’t know about you guys, but when I was in school, I was taught about the different types of conflict that could be included in books. Man vs. nature, man vs. self, man vs. man. While a book can certainly be focused on a single one of these and still be enjoyable if done correctly, having a mix of the three provides the most engaging read.
In The Hunger Games, we have the actual Games as a primary conflict. It is a physical threat Katniss is facing. We also have her inner conflict and turmoil. We have things she wants, things she is afraid of, things that she hates about herself, her values, and things she cares about. And finally, we have her conflicts with not only the other district tributes, but Peeta as well.
Throughout the book we see a steady rhythm of intense action, followed by a breather, and internal/character conflict popping up throughout these moments. Which is a big reason why multiple forms of conflict are useful in keeping a story engaging.
Much as no one wants to read a snooze fest, very few people want to read balls to the wall, nonstop action for 400 pages. Lulls in action make action more intense. Moments of happiness make moments of tragedy more gutting.
And so in this moment of relative calm (as calm as you can get in the middle of a child killing competition) we get an intense inner conflict from Katniss about Peeta. She explains that while Career tributes (districts 1, 2, and 4) teaming up is normal, another district doing it is all but unheard of. This is viewed as a betrayal by Katniss and just adds another layer to her complicated relationship with Peeta.
This dynamic is interesting for the audience as well because we can’t see what Peeta is feeling presently. (Warning: incoming tangent)
First person POV has become wildly popular in the YA category of fiction. Your POV (point of view) is important because in order for a first person perspective to work, your protagonist has to be strong enough and have enough internal conflict to carry the story. Not only that, but your other characters have to be interesting and thought out, and withholding their perspective has to add something to the reading experience.
During The Hunger Games, Peeta’s admittance that he loves Katniss is a running question throughout the novel. His motives and true intentions are hidden behind a lack of his perspective, the fact that these characters aren’t in the type of environment that would allow for in depth conversations about one’s feelings, and the fact that it would ultimately help Peeta to betray Katniss in this way, as well as adding drama for the audience. It would offer him protection in a pack of stronger tributes, and access to supplies that he could take advantage of until the pool of tributes shrank enough for him to steal some and make off with them.
The Hunger Games at its’ core is a horrific twist on a reality tv show. And the kind of manufactured drama that would come from Peeta confessing his love for Katniss and then turning on her would be unprecedented.
There are a lot of first person POV books that shouldn’t be so. But we aren’t talking about those currently so I’ll leave my tangent here.
Katniss spends the next two days looking for water, and her situation becomes more and more dire. She realizes that Haymitch, her mentor, is in charge of managing and sending gifts from her sponsors to the arena, and could ultimately send her water.
We get another interesting character relationship moment as Katniss thinks her way through the reasons Haymitch could be withholding water. Hatred, spite, drunkenness, until she finally falls on him trying to send her a message. Trying to tell her that she’s nearly found water.
This is a running theme in the entire The Hunger Games series. Katniss and Haymitch have a very interesting relationship in that they understand each other’s subtle messages, non-verbal cues, body language, and hidden meanings. This makes their relationship woes all the more compelling in later books. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Katniss finds her water despite the close call, and manages to drink half a gallon and get snuggled down into another tree before a Gamemaker-made wildfire terrifies her awake.
Chapter 13:
This chapter is an increase in pace following our brief reprieve in the previous chapter. Katniss escapes the wildfire, as well as fireballs sent by the Gamemakers, with a severe burn on her calf and some minor burns on her hands. She mentions that Gamemakers often do this to drive tributes together, so she prepares her kit before taking some time to treat her burns in a spring fed pool.
We then get an encounter with the Career pack, including Peeta. Katniss climbs a tree to escape them, and we see another benefit of her hunger and size in district 12. The Careers are all large, even the girls, and Katniss is able to climb 30+ feet up in a tree while the branches start breaking on the other tributes.
They have her bow and arrows as well, not knowing that if she had that weapon, they’d all be dead in that moment and the Hunger Games would have been nearly over.
She spends some time teasing the Careers before nightfall comes, and the pack sets up camp at the base of her tree. She sets up her own camp in the tree, hanging her burning calf out of her sleeping bag.
The chapter ends with Katniss noticing a set of eyes in the branches of another tree, and little Rue, the district 11 girl, pointing to something over her head.
Overall, a short chapter predominantly ruled by fast-paced action. But still effective in setting up future action, providing multiple forms of conflict, and increasing tension.
Chapter 14:
Rue is pointing at a tracker jacker nest (lab-made super wasps that track down whoever messes with their nest). Katniss comes up with a plan to saw the branch the nest is hanging from and send the entire thing crashing down into the Career pack. The smoke from the wildfire has subdued the wasps and provided her with this unique opportunity.
She saws through most of the branch in the night, then decides to return in the morning. It’s inferred that Haymitch was so impressed by her show of initiative and knew her injury would slow her down, so he sends Katniss a pot of medicine for her burns with sponsor money.
Morning comes, and Katniss saws the branch, sending the nest down onto the Careers. She is stung 3 times before the nest falls, and horrible hallucinations plague her, but her enemies are far worse off.
The tracker-jackers kill two tributes, including the girl who had possession of Katniss’ bow. She manages to fight her way back and in a particularly gruesome scene, get her bow and arrows.
Just as she is trying to take in all the nightmarish happenings, Peeta runs into the clearing and yells at her to run. Cato, the boy from district 2, is in pursuit of him and Peeta only just manages to save Katniss from being killed by him.
The chapter ends as Katniss descends into a hellish landscape of hallucinations and blacks out.
Chapter 15:
We start the chapter with Katniss’ nightmares from the tracker jacker venom, followed by her waking up and taking stock of her situation. She tends to her needs while thinking about the fact that Peeta saved her, her family, her best friend Gale, and Peeta’s possible motivations for his most recent actions.
It’s here we get the first glimpse of the “love triangle” in the books. I put that in quotations because it’s less a love triangle than a horribly traumatized girl trying to decide what course of action she should take to protect the people she cares about from harm, but I digress. Katniss says,
“I wonder what Gale made of the incident for a moment and then I push the whole thing out of my mind because for some reason Gale and Peeta do not coexist well together in my thoughts.”
We get a lot more of this dynamic in book two, and it’s cranked up to maximum in book three, so I won’t dwell on it too long. But Katniss’ decision between Peeta and Gale ultimately represents the life she wants and world she wishes to live in. She recognizes throughout the course of the series that both cannot exist simultaneously.
A world in which Katniss is left alone to simply be and isn’t involved in the messy, political, war-fueled country she and others have been used by for years cannot live side-by-side with the anger and ambition and drive to change things and fight the system. Katniss has been left broken by this injustice despite her ultimately making the world a better place. And while she works to help the people around her to remember her sacrifice, she and other characters know that history is bound to repeat itself. And yet we are often stuck in this cycle, doomed by the narrative, unable to change the relentless force of millions of people having made up their minds about something based on a single act, a single shift in the precarious balancing of the scales of life.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Katniss picks up the pieces from her latest debacle: cleaning her new weapons and herself, eating, drinking, treating her wounds, hunting, and making her way through the terrain of the arena.
She meets Rue, and the two decide to set up an alliance. I’ll have more to say about this later, but these developments ultimately add more tension to the story, since only one tribute can live. Rue also reminds Katniss of Prim, and that kind of dissonance we get seeing Rue not have anyone who can volunteer for her adds some intrigue and tragedy to her character.
We learn a bit about district 11, mainly that they specialize in agriculture, they don’t get to eat the crops they grow, and that their district is ultimately more strict with their laws than district 12. This comes as a surprise to Katniss, as part of the Capitol’s strength is limiting knowledge districts have about each other and instead focusing on their individual products/resources.
Rue has managed to harvest quite a few things to eat, so the two split their provisions in case they get separated and climb a tree together. Rue also explains that a pair of sunglasses included in Katniss’ pack are for seeing in darkness.
Katniss tells Rue about Peeta saving her, and assures her that it’s all just an act for the cameras despite Rue’s questioning of this. Their conversation returns to the Careers, and the sheer amount of supplies they possess. Katniss then comes up with a plan to destroy their powerful adversaries’ supplies and leave them weakened to attacks.
And so we reach the end of chapter 15. Things are starting to heat up, and only a handful of players remain in the Games. We have several internal conflicts to deal with, and tension is mounting.
I hope you enjoyed this segment of my The Hunger Games analysis.
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Writing My World 