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Essay on The Hunger Games: Fiction or Reality?

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Fiction is “the act of feigning, inventing, or imagining”, but in Suzanne Collin’s book, The Hunger Games, fiction is merely a reflection of what is already going on in the world today (“Fiction”). Could this fiction novel, The Hunger Games, really be America’s future? Well, major themes in the book such as inequality between rich and poor, suffering as entertainment, importance of appearance, and government control point toward the answer being yes. Primarily, the major comparison between the novel and our world today is the theme of inequality between rich and poor. In The Hunger Games, there is an immense gap between the rich and the poor. The rich living in the city’s capitol, Panem, and the poor living in the twelve districts, …show more content…

Similarly, American’s are some of the wealthiest people in the world, but still some of the poorest. There is “nearly 49 million Americans, including 15.9 million children that struggle to put food on the table” (“US Hunger”). The families that are starving are often hard working families who can simply just not make ends meet. Organizations like Feeding America have food banks that give out food to “over 1 million or more Americans each week” (“Hunger in America”). Like the citizens in The Hunger Games, American’s see these major problems, yet do not get up and try to be proactive. Thus keeping this vicious cycle on repeat and letting it continue to worsen. Along with inequality, is the additional theme of other people’s suffering as entertainment. The games are all about fighting, suffering, and death. The more that tributes battle one another, more blood is spilt, thus making the games more entertaining. Katniss specifically speaks about a certain year where half of the tributes died of the cold and she remarks, “It was considered very anti-climactic in the Capitol, all those quiet, bloodless deaths” (39). The suffering is not just physical though, it is also emotional. For example, Peeta and Katniss become star-crossed lovers, “meaning ill-fated”, therefore catching the attention of the capital and its citizens (“The Hunger Games”). The two star-crossed lovers are bound for a certain doom intensifying

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