Final Reaction to The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is a great book. It is very well written and provides a lot of opportunity to see the deeper meaning of the text, seek important messages and lessons to the reader, and make connections with characters. I have no complaints with this book and I think it has earned its “popular” status in America because of how entertaining and stellar the writing is. Finishing this book left me entertained and yearning for more, and I would recommend it to a friend in an instant. This book also offers a lot of connections to our culture and to the reader themselves.
One way that The Hunger Games is relative to our modern culture is how the community, circumstances, and environment influence the culture of an area. For example, in Katniss’s home, District 12, everyone is forced to produce a specific amount of coal every month so suit the Capitol’s (their government) standards. This focus on coal is reflected in every aspect of the people of District 12’s lives, including educational and social practices. In school, a majority of what the students are taught has to deal with either coal or the Capitol (whom forces them to produce coal). Their whole city is covered in a layer of coal dust, and everyone is forced to work in the coal mines to meet the coal quota each month. Their whole culture is centered around coal. This got me thinking about how the environment and circumstances of an area determines its culture. This can be seen in every continent, country, state, and city - each is different based on it’s environment and community. One specific example is in Michigan, agriculture used to be and continues to be a large part of our society, and our school hours and the fact that students get the summer off were all based around children needing to work the fields and harvest crops. This is just one example out of millions.
This book also relates to my inquiry question: “How has education and the government’s influence on it changed over the history of America?”. The setting of the Hunger Games is a place called Panem, which is the remains of what used to be North America. This means that education in the American area completely changed over the course of Panem’s history, as the educational system of Panem is strictly controlled and children aren’t really taught much of what we are taught currently in America, besides basic arithmetic and english. This shows how much education changed after the establishment of Panem, and a possibility of how education could change in the future of North America.