The Hunger Games and The Most Dangerous Game

For the month of March we are reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.* The buzz around this story has grown immensely over the last half year - especially now with the first movie in the trilogy coming out later this month - but it wasn't until recently that I really grew interested in reading these novels. I think my first exposure to them was when I was browsing around Indigo looking for books for the book club to give to Karyn on her arrival home from Rwanda and to celebrate her engagement. I was pretty pregnant at the time, and if you've ever been pregnant you might know this, everyone wants to help you and talk with you. So, while I was browsing in Indigo a number of sales associates offered to help me. I heard about a lot of good books that night but one lady in particular took me on a grand tour of the store showing me many different novels. She brought me over to the pre-teen section, pointed to The Hunger Games trilogy and told me, "now these might be for kids, but seriously, you have got to read them. They're a great read." Although not what I was looking for that night, I tucked that bit of information in my head as something to look into later. I'm so glad that Carolyn chose The Hunger Games to read this month and now I finally have the chance to read them.
Not knowing anything about The Hunger Games story line I was reminded, based on the title alone, of a hallowe'en episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns puts a number of the townspeople in a forest and hunts them for sport (starts at 9:45). That episode is based on the short story "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell which he wrote in 1924. I won't give away the ending, it is worth reading, but it involves man hunting man.

*

This past week I read The Hunger Games trilogy and I now know that it isn't very much like the two stories I thought it was; but it has got me thinking, what is our obsession with man hunting man? Why is that concept so intriguing? Is it because 'man is the ultimate predator' and thus the ultimate challenge to kill? Or is it because there is a fear of death or dying? If that's the case, I'm reminded of what Dumbledore says to Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince about Voldemort being afraid of death and how there "are much worse things" than dying. It's true. Maybe our interest in these stories is based on some fear of being hunted down by someone out to get us. Not to take our life, but to ruin our reputation, spread lies about us, hurt us in some intangible way. Man v. Man. Rat race. Getting to the top no matter what or who stands in our way. Selfishness.
Somehow, all of these thoughts have led me to feel like it is more important than ever to build into one another and not be mean to those who society has cast off but instead encourage them and love them. Otherwise we're no better than people who view humans as a sport and as nothing more than to satisfy their amusement and fulfill their selfish desires. I don't know if that connection makes sense, but it's where I am after reading and mulling over these stories.
There is so much I want to say about The Hunger Games in particular and how it made me feel and what it made me think, but I will leave that to our book club discussion at the end of the month.

* We are officially reading the first novel in the trilogy for discussion but we're sort of hoping everyone reads the whole trilogy so we can talk about the entire story.