In web video posted on Borders Book Club, Suzanne Collins reveals her inspiration for the Hunger Games. Channel surfing on late night TV, she was struck by the irony between her choices of entertainment - reality programs and 24 hour news footage covering the Iraq war. Collins grew up with her father fighting in Vietnam, and her view of war is very authentic, very raw. War is not a sanitized nightly news bite with statistics of casualties. It is personal for her, and this is very evident in all three of her books, but particularly in the third.
A lot of people die in this book. The events of the first two books escalate into rebellion and full scale war. And Collins holds nothing back. Innocent lives are lost, on both sides of the fight, as each tries to gain victory. Katniss finds herself struggling with some very important questions about what she will do to survive, how far she can she go to destroy the Capitol and still remain ethical. How far the rebellion can go before the their fight becomes less about survival and more about kiling for the sake of total victory. Collins creates certain situations in the war that hit far too close for comfort, given our county's current involvement in two wars half a world away. Children die. There are scenes in the book that make the end of Harry Potter look like a happy romp through fantasy land. It feels so authentic that I found myself even more profoundly disturbed than when I read the end of the first novel even though, in my opinion, the Hunger Games depicted more graphic violence.
In this, Collins has accomplished her goal: to make her readers, young adult or no, consider the effect the news media (and perhaps even our own government's censorship of the media) is having on us ordinary citizens. To make us consider what war really means. To appeal to our sense of decency and compassion even as Katniss struggles to maintain hers.
Readers will be gratified to know that Collins finally does answer, once and for all, the Gale vs Peeta question. However, it is not the focus of the book, and the love triangle plays itself out in ways that, while realistic and true to the characters, are still entirely unpredictable. This book is about war, not romance. It is an examination of how love can be twisted and manipulated in the face of corrupt power.
I cannot speak highly enough about the impact of this book. It is disturbing, but for all the right reasons.
