Book Review: Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, published in 2008 by Scholastic Inc., is a story of survival in the society in suppressive and controlled state.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem. Capitol surrounded by twelve separate Districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the Districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death in the arena on live TV.

Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are the two main characters of the novel.

Katniss Everdeen is a sixteen year old girl from District 12 who volunteers for the Hunger Games as a tribute in order to save her younger sister Prim, whose name was drawn during the District’s 12 reaping. Katniss is a skilled hunter, archer and trapper. Katniss's past hardships (her father's death, mother's depression, and near starvation) have made her a survivor, and she will endure hardship and hard work to preserve her own life and the life of her family.

Peeta Melark, a sixteen year old boy, is chosen as male tribute from District 12. Peeta is a son of the local baker. He doesn’t have an outdoor skills like Katniss, but he has a strength. He also was great at baking, camouflage and painting.

At the end of the novel Peeta and Katniss, both, manage to survive due to a rule change by Gamemakers.

The main themes of The Hunger Games are survival, starvation, love, poverty. The main idea behind the novel is show people, no matter how big the obstacle they can overcome it if they try hard enough. Katniss and Peeta overcome many difficulties during the novel but they don’t give up. My most favorite character of the novel was Peeta because underneath all the pretences he was the one who actually was real. By real, I mean he was just an average person who did not pretended when he didn’t have to.

“What about Lover Boy?” (pg 216) This quote from The Hunger Games makes me smile. It also shows that Suzanne Collins uses humor in her novel. She keeps the reader light and reading.

I recommend this book mostly for the younger generation of women. I am not a fan of “fake” love stories and most guys agree with me. I also didn’t like that during Hunger Games the help just appeared from the sky from their sponsors, it all was little too confusing and unrealistic. Overall I give The Hunger Games a high thumbs down.

                                 GREEEN IS FOR WOMEN  RED IS FOR MEN                               

 

PBS Culture Shock

After completing the "You Decide" activity our final decision was that it was OK to use the video game image on the homepage of the PBS website. It wasn't very hard to make the decisions with my partner. For some people video games are form of art, but for most it's just a form of entertainment. Video games should be considered to be art. You have to be very creative and very smart to be game developer. There's only one picture that was too graphic. It was Andrea Mantegna's St. Sebastian. It was way more graphic than any video game picture that we saw on PBS website.
Video games do not make people kill each other. If a person is raised the right way by their parents it wouldn't be such an issue. My parents raised me right and I know what's real and what's not. The video game image does not portray reality and is ok.  The main objective of the game is compete and have fun and not to kill and be evil. Video games entertain us.