Remove the love triangle …

A Radical Female Hero From Dystopia

Check out this interesting article from The New York Times. According to the writers of the article, Katniss Everdeen is one of the most radical female characters to appear in American movies. Read it here.

The Hunger Games – the first teaser trailer

Hunger Games Roots: Greece and Rome

I have been posting on The Hunger Games. You will also find material at english@kkc reading challenges as well. Here is something from The League of Extraordinary Writers:

Watch out. I’m about to get my nerd on.

But in the case of reading HUNGER GAMES, my extreme nerdiness actually came in handy. See, Suzanne Collins clearly comes from the school of nerdy writing–there are tons of great historical allusions in HUNGER GAMES that gives the story a little something extra for fellow nerds.

I think the greatest influence comes from Ancient Greece and Rome. Some are obvious, some aren’t. Below, you’ll find some of my favourite references and influences of history in HUNGER GAMES.

Theseus & Tributes

The story of Theseus is most often associated with his epic battle with the Minotaur, the half-man, half-bull monster at the center of the Labyrinth. But before he did that, he had to deal with a tribute system that will remind HUNGER GAMES readers of how Katniss and Peeta became tributes.

King Aegeus was ordered to send seven of the most courageous young men and seven of the most beautiful young women of Athens to Crete as a tribute to King Minos every seventh year (there are various accounts of this; some use the number nine instead of seven). Crete had defeated Athens in battle; the tributes were to be a lasting reminder of Crete’s power and success.

Sound familiar? It should: Suzanne Collins definitely had this story in mind when she wrote. She said in an interview with School Library Journal:

Theseus and the Minotaur is the classical setup for where The Hunger Games begins, you know, with the tale of Minos in Crete….

Read more here.

The Hunger Games – PG 13?

After reading The Hunger Games it was clear to see that filming the series would present difficulties in terms of keeping the movie from being too violent for the target audience.  Director Gary Ross told Entertainment Weekly:

It’s not going to be an R-rated movie because I want the 12- and 13- and 14-year-old-fans to be able to go see it. This book means too much to too many teenagers for it not to be PG-13. It’s their story and they deserve to be able to access it completely. And I don’t think it needs to be more extreme than that. I don’t need to have a huge prosthetic budget or make this movie incredibly bloody in order for it to be just as compelling, just as scary, and just as riveting.

The book that changed my life – Rosa

The Hunger Games is a young-adult science fiction novel written by Suzanne Collins. I first read the book when my sister introduced me to it a year after it was first released. I refused to put it down until I had finally finished becuase it was such a gripping book.

Collins creates a believable future based after a third world war. In this future the government working in a central city called the Capitol holds all the power over the remaining 12 districts. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual televised event where the Capitol chooses one boy and one girl from each district to send into an arena where they are forced to battle for their lives against each other, but only one comes home alive.

This book made me realise what some people are willing to do to protect the ones they love, even if it means their own death.

This was during the first five chapters of the book, meaning there was even more to come like things to do with personal independence and government control.

Suzanna Collins makes you fall in love with characters and understand all the hardships and pain that they go through and ends each book of the trilogy believable.

Find out more about The Hunger Games here.