Feminist Studies of Experience in The Hunger Games Cedric Dent, Jr. College

Suzanne Collins captivates readers of every age, race, and sex with her dystopian, slightly Orwellian novel, The Hunger Games. Aspects of it are reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s The Giver in that the society depicted is one in which mankind has progressed through all that readers in reality have experienced and surmised that it is best to evolve beyond such structures to create a post-structural society in which rules they deem most befitting humanity as a whole are made law. Collins depicts a barbaric, post-modern rendering of the gladiatorial games of Ancient Greece with several unique twists, and the result is a survival-of-the-fittest royale between predominately poor children as a spectacle of entertainment for the wealthy. Needless to say, the novel is most often analyzed for its classism because it is so easily observed as an intact, oppressive institution in the text, but one of the most potent, underlying themes that supplements this classism is the female experience, which Collins breaks down for its problematic facets and more equally distributes its marginalization among the characters who are oppressed; consequently, oppression becomes analogous to the feminine experience.

Plucked from the dismal life that, in and of...