January Read: The Hunger Games

Hey everyone! I’m back with the first book review in a few months, and it’s on Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. I’d been curious about this book for a long time, with all the hype surrounding it, and while I found a few reviews about it which made me decide to try it, I didn’t find too detailed of a Christian/content review. So that’s what this post is for!

As always, my content review comes first, and will have spoilers. My personal review may or may not have spoilers, and comes beneath it.

The Synopsis (Taken from Goodreads)

Could you survive on your own in the wild, with every one out to make sure you don’t live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying 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 on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weight survival against humanity and life against love.

Content Review:

Positive Content: Most of the positive content comes from the characters themselves and how they stand up for what is right and for those they love and care about.

Katniss, as the main character, is fiercely devoted to her family, especially her little sister, Prim. After their father died, she took over providing for her family, her mother going into a sort of trauma shock. When given the opportunity to run away before the reaping, where the tributes for the Hunger Games are chosen, she and her friend Gale know they’d never run away because they need to provide for their families. Later, when Prim’s name is chosen as a tribute, Katniss volunteers to go instead of her younger and weaker sister.

Katniss tries wine, but decides she doesn’t like how it makes her feel and stops drinking it. In the Games, she teams up with the youngest tribute, twelve-year-old Rue, and they help each other out and share food. She doesn’t want to kill anyone.

As for Peeta, despite Katniss’s suspicion of him due to the fact that only one of them can survive the Games, everything he does is to help her. They encourage each other, and put the other above themselves, though Katniss doesn’t understand why Peeta is doing it for her.

When they were younger, Peeta risked punishment to give Katniss bread after her father dies and she is starving. While in the Games, Peeta saves her life. He doesn’t want Katniss to die for him.

Katniss and Peeta’s mentor, Haymitch, a prior winner of the Hunger Games, is a gruff drunk, however, he clearly wants his two students to win, even getting sober to help them. He sends Katniss some medicine when she is injured, and is trying to help them as much as he can behind the scenes. Katniss, though she dislikes Haymitch initially, starts understanding while in the games that maybe he drinks and acts the way he does because of how hard he’s had it after winning the Hunger Games, with watching all his mentorees be killed in the prior games. She finally realizes all his unexplained actions which previously annoyed her were to keep her and Peeta alive.

When arriving at the Capitol, Katniss is given a prep team to get her ready for her reveal to the public as a tribute. They all sincerely help her and want her to do good in the games.

The people of District 11, Rue’s district, send Katniss bread for helping Rue, a very pricy sacrifice for them. A boy tribute lets a girl tribute live because she cared for his friend.

Rating: 4.5/5

Spiritual Content: I didn’t notice any spiritual content in this book whatsoever!

Rating: N/A

Romantic Content: A major part of Haymitch’s strategy for Katniss and Peeta’s survival (which depends partially on what sponsors they receive and how popular they are with the public) is for them to play a star-crossed lovers show. However, on Peeta’s part, his feelings are true, whereas Katniss is not sure about hers, if she likes him, if she likes her childhood friend Gale, or if she’ll get married at all. She doesn’t want children because she doesn’t want them to be forced to go to the Hunger Games when they get of age.

Katniss and Peeta hold hands and she kisses his cheek for show. Later on during the games when Peeta is very sick, she kisses him on the lips several times to both get supplies from sponsors and to get Peeta to do as she says. Peeta strokes her hair to help her fall asleep, and tells her about when he started liking her. Even after the Games, Katniss and Peeta are forced to keep playing the lovers show, resulting in them kissing, hugging, and staying close to each other in public.

Once, Katniss and Peeta do kiss for real, not just for show, and Katniss likes it.

Rating: 4/5

Violence: When I started this book, the violence was the main thing I was worried about, since I’ve read multiple reviews citing this as a very violent, bloody book. What I found was it both was and wasn’t a violent book. Let me explain.

The whole plot of the book is teens fighting in a gladiator-type game where there can only be one winner. Obviously with twenty-four opponents, there is going to be violence in this book. So don’t pick it up if you’re worried about reading people getting killed in a variety of ways.

However. The killings, in my opinion, are described very lightly, giving just enough information to get across what happened. So while it is a violent book, it’s not a gory book. It is also shown in a negative light–Katniss, the main character, doesn’t want to kill, and her love interest and fellow District tribute Peeta also doesn’t want to kill, and only once accidentally kills someone by leaving out poisonous berries (which he didn’t know were poisonous) which another tribute steals and eats. I’ll explain most of the violence below.

There is talk about some tribute children being killed with maces and knives, and how some froze to death. The Gamemakers are somehow able to create mutant animals out of the dead tributes, but it’s never explained how.

Katniss is injured when fireballs are shot at her, and retches from the exhaustion of running. She is also stung by mutated wasps which cause her to hallucinate what she fears most and makes her very sick and weak. Later, she manages to blow up the food supply of other tributes, but the blast makes her go deaf in one ear for some time.

Peeta is injured in the leg, the wound oozing blood and puss and by the time Katniss finds him, he’s very weak and the wound smells. Later, a boy nearly chokes Peeta to death, causing him to turn blue.

The worst violence of the book is the various ways several tributes die, described below.

A boy is killed with a knife to the back, spitting blood on Katniss’s face. A girl is killed after begging for her life, and the boy who is the villain for most of the book snaps another boy’s neck. Another boy spears a friend of Katniss’s, and she kills him with an arrow. A boy slams a rock against a girl’s head to avenge another tribute’s death. A girl cuts Katniss’s forehead, sending blood into Katniss’s vision and making her taste it. She spits some blood back into the girl’s face. A boy is partially eaten by mutant animals, and Katniss shoots him to put him out of his misery.

Rating: 3.5/5

Language: All clean here!

Rating: 5/5

Other Negative Content: Katniss has issues with her mother because her mother did not step up and provide for her and her sister after their father died. However, she does understand her mother now feels bad for it, and knows she loves her.

Katniss shoves Peeta into a vase, breaking it and injuring his hands, because she thought he made her look weak in front of possible sponsors. In reality, he helped her. Later in the Games, she lies to him and forces him to take a sleeping potion so she can get some supplies by herself to help him.

At the end of the Games, when Katniss and Peeta must decide which one of them will die for the other to be the victor, Katniss suggests they commit suicide together so neither will have to kill the other, and to defy the Capitol, who must have a victor of the Hunger Games. They almost follow through on the plan.

At the end of the book, Peeta realizes Katniss’s “feelings” for him were just (or mostly) a show she and Haymitch played for their survival, and is upset.

Katniss is forced to undergo “beauty treatments” in preparation for the Games. While not sexual in nature, she is forced to go naked in order to have these beauty treatments done. One female tribute wears a “provocative, see-through” dress.

Haymitch is a drunk, and is almost always drinking. Once he throws up and slips in it, forcing Katniss and Peeta to have to help him.

The government makes the Hunger Games into a holiday and forces everyone to watch them on TV to taunt the people and remind them they are in charge. The Gamemakers lie to the tributes while in the Games, first saying two tributes from the same district can survive, but then at the end, they revoke it.

Oddly enough, I found a few sentences that may have typos since I reread them a few times and still couldn’t understand them. But only a few.

Rating: 3.5/5

Total Content Rating: 4.10/5 Stars

Personal Review:

As with many popular books and movies, I came into this book both with high expectations and also the feeling I would be disappointed, since usually I am. However, I’d say this book pleasantly surprised me by living up to most of my expectations of it. It wasn’t as gory as I thought it would be based off other reviews (as explained in my content review) and I found myself liking most of the major characters, and disliking the villains, instead of my usual dislike of one or more major characters and liking some of the villains, and I even liked the romantic element, something very hard to get me to like.

I’m still processing my feelings about this book, so my star amount may change, but since it definitely kept me on the edge of my seat, and was one of the few books that kept me thinking about it even after I read it for the day, I’m going to give it four and a half stars, and will probably eventually try to finish the series!

I would recommend this for those 13+ just due to the themes of subject of the book.

Personal Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

Thank you for reading! Will you or have you read this book? Will you or have you seen the movies? Would you recommend them? Why or why not? Are there any books similar to this that you enjoy? Let me know in the comments below! God bless! ~ Kay Adelin