Books were always important to me as a kid and grown-up. I liked to imagine myself within the story to escape the boring mundane world. Like many others, I grew up with the Harry Potter series, and later as a young adult I read the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It is important for young people that they can find themselves in stories and learn how the world works. But what is considered suitable literature for young people?
In the past, the term young adult embraced people who are twelve to eighteen years old. However, nowadays, the age shifted, and also nineteen to twenty-five years olds are considered young adults due to the fact that coming of age itself became more significant in the past five years.
The term young adult started when more and more Americans began to live with their parents because of economic hard times. They are in no rush to accept adult responsibilities as the average life span for a human being is higher than in the past.
Furthermore, more research has shown, that the human brain is not fully wired at the age of twelve as believed before. Experts proved that the brain continues to grow until the mid-twenties. Moreover, a study shows that the last part of the brain, which is completely developed, is the so-called prefrontal cortex. It is responsible for adult behavior such as the regulation of emotions and impulse control.
Today the new categories for literature are middle grade (children from ten to eleven), teen (young people from twelve to eighteen), and young adult (people from nineteen to twenty-five). Those categories are not fixed because every individual human being has their own growing and learning pace.
In this term paper, I want to look at young adult dystopian literature and how it changed over the years. After that, I examine the Hunger Games as the prime example for nowadays young adult dystopian fiction. I am going to describe world-building and I want to discuss the character of Katniss Everdeen, who is viewed as the perfect strong female character.
Dystopian Fiction
Over the past couple of years, dystopian fiction seems to be on the rise in popular culture. This is largely due to the fact of the success of the trilogy The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins in 2008. However, the genre dystopia is relatively young, for example, one of the first dystopian books was written before 1900 by Jonathan Swift. The question arises when became dystopian fiction popular in modern pop culture.
Firstly, dystopia is the opposite of utopia, both terms need to be defined in order to get a better understanding. Utopia, which was the first concept out of the two that can be found in literature, means that a place is too good to exist. In contrast, dystopia is described as a place where everything is bad and usually the environment is destroyed as well or barely habitable. The term was first used by John Stuart Mill in 1868, however, authors began to describe their works as dystopian 50 years after that.
Nowadays, there is a rise in dystopian fiction in young adult books. That has largely to do with a drastic shift in literature because of the events of 9/11. The shift from a simple world to absolute chaos and teenage death in literature has to do with the political climate post-9/11, which is described as a climate of fear. Additionally, teenagers are now exposed to 24h news networks and social media, which depict terror, violence, natural disasters, and extremism on a daily basis.
To make it clearer let’s compare two children/ young adults with each other. Harry Potter is a popular middle-grade book series that was written by JK Rowling and first published in 1997. It follows an eleven-year-old boy, who discovers a hidden magical world. The series provides the readers with great imagination and teaches them hope and escapism. Almost everyone wishes to go to Hogwarts on their eleventh birthday to escape the boring mundane world.
The Hunger Games are on the other hand that example of new young adult dystopian fiction, which revolves around terror, death, starvation, and loss of freedom, mind, and identity. Despite those dark elements, The Hunger Games is also filled with wishes just like Harry Potter. Those wishes are for example escaping a social order, being the chosen one, and saving one’s family. All of those wishes are projected on Katniss Everdeen, a teenage girl who is given adult responsibilities and who is the leader of a revolution.
In addition, The Hunger Games are not set in a secret world, like Harry Potter but take place after the world we know about has already ended. For instance, Panem is a totalitarian state which exists after some unknown natural disaster happened years before. Other new young adult dystopian fiction like The Maze Runners or Divergent takes place after the world ended. It is said that dystopia nowadays is not apocalyptic but postapocalyptic.
New YA dystopian fiction is a lot darker than Harry Potter, where the first few books were quite harmless and grew much darker as the reader aged with Harry. The Hunger Games on the other hand seemed to pick up where Harry Potter ended.
Moreover, another aspect of the new YA dystopian literature is the lack of adults, they seem to disappear. While in Harry Potter, adults like Dumbledore exist to help Harry with his tasks, there is a severe lack of them in books like Divergent. Particularly in The Hunger Games, the reader can see how fragile the adult society is. Even the face of the revolution, which happens mainly in the last book, is a teenage girl. Furthermore, it can be argued that the lack of protection for children and teenagers is the adult’s fault as they created the new world.
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is the story of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives together with her younger sister Prim and her mother in District 12 of Panem. Her story begins on the day of the reaping, where every year a girl and a boy from each of the twelve districts are chosen to participate in the Hunger Games. A game is hosted by the Capitol, the capital city of Panem, where the rich people live. Every tribute which takes part in the games has to kill the other ones in order to survive and win the game.
This year’s girl tribute for District 12 is Prim, Katniss’ younger sister. Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place immediately. Together with Peeta Mellark, the male tribute. she travels to the Capitol to train for the games and get sponsors. Both of them are coached by Haymitch Abernathy, a former winner of the games.
After all, tributes went through their training to get points from the so-called game makers and were presented on television, they are thrown into an arena where they must fight for their lives. With success and luck, Katniss and Peeta are the only two tributes left, meaning one must kill the other one in order to end the game. However, throughout the game they became friends, maybe even more and neither Katniss nor Peeta can kill the other person.
Due to Katniss’ quick thinking, she suggests that both should die, meaning that there will not be a winner this year. Luckily, the game makers realize that this would be a huge mistake and let them both win the game. However, this action is seen as resistance in the Capitol and Haymitch warns Katniss about President Snow, who is the dictator of Panem. He is not happy about this act of defiance.
From now on, Katniss must be careful about the way she acts and needs to try to sell her action as an act of love for Peeta. At the end of book one in the trilogy, both Katniss and Peeta go back home to their district, where their families and everyone else await them to celebrate.
World Building
The Hunger Games take place in a country named Panem, which is established after the continent North America was destroyed by natural disasters. In the beginning, Panem consists of the Capitol and 13 districts that lived together in harmony. Later in time, the so-called Dark Days happened, an uprising of the districts against the Capitol. After years of war, the Capitol defeated twelve districts and destroyed District 13 completely. As a punishment, the Capitol created the Hunger Games to ensure that the Dark Days will never happen again.
The place where the capitol is located is called the Rockies, which is believed to be the former Rocky Mountains, positioning the capital city in northwest America. The last district is supposed to be in the former Appalachian region, the eastern part of America. With that information, the reader has an overview of how big Panem is and where it is roughly located.
The main character in the story, Katniss Everdeen, lives in District 12, in the part where they call the Seam. Each district has a typical work field assigned and District 12 consists of coal miners, which included also Katniss’ father who died because of a mining accident. Leaving Katniss to take on the role of the breadwinner, she begins to hunt for her family to survive. Hunting is illegal and could be severely punished by the authority, but Katniss sees no other solution and goes through the electric fence, which is in front of the forest, every day to bring home food.
District 12 is characterized as one of the poorest districts of Panem, other districts are not as poor because they have different work fields assigned, for example, masonry or fishing. Furthermore, it seems that with an increase in the district number the living standard decreases.
Katniss’ biggest fear is the reaping, it is a ceremony the new tributes of the Hunger Games will be drawn. The participants are twelve to eighteen years old. When a tribute reaches the age of twelve, their name is thrown into the bowl once, when the participant is thirteen the name lands in the bowl twice. At the age of eighteen, a participant’s name can be found seven times or more if they are poor and throw their name in multiple times in order to get tesserae filled with grain and oil which lasts for one year. Katniss’ name can be found twenty times in that bowl because she needs the bag of oil and grain, as her family is one of the poorest in District 12.
For every ceremony, the participants must wear clean and nice clothes, as it is broadcasted on television. The mayor reads the history of Panem in the main square and the Treaty of Treason is mentioned to ensure peace and that no district will start a revolution again. One girl and one boy will be chosen as a tribute for the games. They are forced to fight against the tributes from the other districts until they are the only ones alive, they even must kill the tribute from their own district to be the winner of the games.
The Hunger Games connect the people with each other in the district, whereas in the Capitol the games are mostly used as a celebration. Moreover, it is mentioned that the people in the capitol send little goods, which they do not need, to the children in the arena to feel better about themselves. That shows the stark contrast between the Capitol and the districts, where on the one hand people are so rich, that they can live a luxurious life and on the other hand people starve to death because they cannot provide for themselves.
To conclude the world-building, the reader has a brief overview of what Panem looks like and how life is in this dystopian setting. However, it is not clear when this world was established and when the old world, meaning the United States was destroyed.
The character of Katniss Everdeen as a strong female YA protagonist
Female protagonists are at the center of YA dystopian fiction as they change and shape their society and create their own identities and destinies. This is a stark contrast to former young adult literature where female characters are depicted as a damsel in distress who needs a prince charming to save them. Today, female characters are the key agents in resistance to the dystopian government, and they are crucial for the rebuilding of society.
Katniss is a girl of power, from the opening pages till the end of the series. In the beginning, she is described as a survivor who hunts animals to keep her family alive. She is an independent and intelligent individual who fights the country’s oppressive Capitol.
Moreover, her behavior and attitude are more similar to the norms of masculinity than femininity. That was shaped by the way she grew up and other circumstances of her life, like the death of her father, which forced her at a young age to be the head of the family because her mother could not provide due to mental instability. Additionally, Katniss lives in District 12, where people are fairly poor and are familiar with the concept of hunger and death.
In order to keep her family alive, she takes on the role of the provider and protector. That means she hunts and trades food, which are illegal acts and punishable by death. Through her rebellious behavior, Katniss shows her empowerment. Her strong character traits consist of thinking for herself, taking action when necessary, and trusting her own judgment. However Katniss herself does not see her actions as rebellious, she sees them as necessary because that is the only way to survive and avoid starvation.
Katniss bases her identity on her role of the protector, a role she is born out of the position of an object of Panem. In the first book, she occupies the object position just like the other tributes. Throughout the book, Katniss fights not the big enemy, which is Panem and its corrupted political system but the immediate enemy which is hunger and the fear of death. Since she is so focused on surviving life in District 12 and later the Hunger Games, she does not see the bigger picture and the effect she has on others. She does, however, believe that she is powerful, but it only enables her to take care of herself and her family.
Furthermore, when she is in the Capitol, the reader can see that she indeed can influence people. However, Katniss does not recognize it as her power but blames the citizen of Panem that they would not be reacting to her as a person but to a version of her, constructed by the Capitol. She thinks she is not able to change anything. Rebellion and rage are seen as pointless, even though she has a survival instinct, she does not recognize this as a subversive act.
Her first conscious act of rebellion is based on the death of tribute and ally Rue. Katniss views her death as the most senseless and wants to do something to show resistance and punish the Capitol. She buries Rue’s body with wildflowers, knowing it would be shown on television. Katniss’ gesture honors Rue, something the Capitol does not want, as it humanizes the game.
Her second conscious act of rebellion happened at the end of book one of the trilogies. Throughout the game, the Gamemakers changed the rule that would allow two tributes to win the game. This rule, however, was revoked at the end, meaning only one winner is allowed. Now, Katniss must kill Peeta or Peeta must kill Katniss. Killing Peeta would affect Katniss emotionally and would also affect her identity as a citizen of District 12. She still sees herself as a protector and killing Peeta would force her to question this identity despite killing other tributes from the other districts. She pleads to Peeta to not kill himself because she will “never go home, not really.” In her mind, she will always search for a way out of the arena if she must kill him, meaning she could never forget it and would rather die than kill him.
Luckily, Katniss is smart enough to know that the game is a victory to ensure hope to the people in the districts that there is a way out of poverty when one wins the Hunger Games. Knowing that she realizes that without a winner, the game would not fulfill its purpose and the Capitol would lose power over its people. In order to save herself and Peeta, she instigates that both of them should kill themselves. Fortunately, her plan is working and the Gamemakers declare her and Peeta as winners of the game. This act sets the stage for the future rebellion and Katniss’ self-discovery journey throughout the next two books.
At the end of the book, Haymitch warns Katniss that her actions have been recognized by the Capitol as an act of revolution. She needs to be careful and is advised to play along with Haymitch’s idea that she is in love with Peeta and did not want to kill him because she could not live without him anymore. With that in mind, Katniss recognizes that she is in great danger and that also her family and friends are not safe anymore. That shows that still identifies herself as a protector.
Lastly, after she comes home her whole life completely changed. She faces a new threat from the government and president Snow and she is not poor anymore. That means that she now lives in a huge house and does not have to worry about food anymore. However, this put her in a huge identity crisis, as she considered herself the breadwinner, and now, she does not have to hunt for food anymore. Her family is safe for now. She starts to question herself as her identity slowly crumbles.