The Hunger Games

So, I know you're probably all thinking, "Oh no, not another Hunger Games post. I thought we were DONE with that!" I know not all of you are, ;) but still. I know what you mean. I mention The Hunger Games to a friend the other day, and she told me she wasn't talking about The Hunger Games unless it had something to do with Mocking Jay. I asked her why, and she said, "Because it's becoming the next Twilight, and it's driving me crazy!" But you can all rest assured, that there will be none of that nonsense in this post (hopefully). Aaaaaand.....I just lost my train of thought. See? There it goes. Hold on just a sec. I gotta go catch it.

The Hunger Games is becoming something that it was never meant to be. (Got my train back). It's becoming a debate over who's hotter: Gale, Peeta, Finnick or Cato. It's becoming a simple which guy is the girl going to choose amidst all this other stuff that's going on in her life. It was not meant to be a novel stuffed with cheese. It was meant to have meaning. I don't have one specific place to start, just a bunch of thoughts on the matter, so I'm just going to pick one of them, and start with it.

"It takes twice as long to put yourslef back together again as it does to fall apart,"~ Finnick.
Think about it. It's so much easier to fall into a pit than to climb out of it once you fall in. Have you ever noticed that its so easy sometimes, to give into your emotions? To just sink into that despair that nothing will ever work like its supposed to?  It's so easy to give in to that, to let yourself fall apart. But to put yourself back together again? That's hard. To climb out of the ditch of emotion and confusion that you've fallen into. Finnick is telling Katniss that she can't give into the despair, the stress, the madness, that awaits her. He says that if she once gives into that, it will be twice as hard to climb out of it. Not worth the momentary relief the emotions offer. Katniss is surrounded by war, by a man threatening every one she loves, forcing one them to unwillfully betray them, changing his very memories so that he thinks Katniss is an enemy. Yet she can't give into her emotions. She can't let herself fall apart. Or it would take twice as long to put herself back together again.

And Haymitch. Everyone laughs at the scene where he falls drunk off the stage and his drunken antics on the train, and they are funny, and I did my fair share of laughing, but did you ever stop to really consider the reason behing the drunkeness? Haymitch won the games, which at first, sounds great, he lived, never to play in the games again, but it's not. Now, every year until he dies he has to mentor the District 12 tributes. And District 12, one of the poorest, sends its poor, hungry, terified children to the Games, and Haymitch has to work to find them sponsers, everything he, as a mentor, can do to keep them alive, and then watch them die anyways. Imagine that. Year after year. He drinks himself into blessed oblivian. When he says, "Here's some advice: Stay alive!" It's more than just a humurous quote, it's also a demonstration of a man who's given in to hopelessness. He's accepted the appearent truth that all his tributes are going to die. And it haunts him. Haunts him so that he drinks to forget. To forget the deaths he's been forced to watch. He drinks because for him, there is no other relief. He's doomed to try and save those who will die. To watch the deaths of the innocent, who cannot save themselves. No wonder he wants a way out.

Katniss, who at the end of Mocking Jay, admits she is afraid even of good things because they could be taken away. And that was her experiance in life. If you had something good, it got taken away. Life held nothing good, and if it did it could not last. She told Gale she never wanted to have children, a joy every one of us looks forward to with joy. She didn't want to have children, because how could one be so cruel as to bring children into a world where you're so poor you have to put your name in the Hunger Games drawing more than once in order to eat, as if once wasn't bad enough. How could you raise children in that world? She didn't want to bring more lives more misery.

These are just a few examples. But the Hunger Games is a story about human nature. About how we work. How our thoughts and emotions, our minds, how they respond to life, and trials. It shows us what humans are capable of becoming, from President Snow, to Finnick Odair, to the smallest child killed by the parachute bombs dropped in the Capitol. So what themes or ideas do you see? Please comment! I love hearing everyone's thoughts!