The Hunger Games

"May the odds be ever in your favour."

Before I started reading The Hunger Games, I had seen the film of the second book. This obviously influenced my perspective about the book; it made me more eager to read it because I wanted to find out how they got to the point where the second film started as I had not seen the first one. Even though I already knew the book would end with the both of them surviving the book still didn’t become dull, but I can say I was happy I hadn’t seen the first film before reading the book.

It wasn’t until we had made a mind map in class that I realized how many factors were connected to each other, and I think we could have found many more if we’d have had more time because we kept going once we started. I would say eventually everything comes back to hope, hope to survive, hope to return alive, hope to keep to going. You can see the connections we made in the mind map in the picture below. We chose to use symbols instead  of words, as symbols can contain multiple words whilst some words sometimes can’t cover the complete message.We used the phrase “may the odds be ever in your favour” as the centre of our mind map as we believe everything revolves around the odds and they are never in the favour of those who need it most.

I really liked the ending, especially the part of the berries. I did know that they’d both survive, but I was still surprised when the rule about two survivors was changed back suddenly. When I read that part I was shocked and I couldn’t help laughing when they took the berries and the Capitol was forced to recall their decision, as I think that made it all come together; they wanted to make a change, not to be puppets of the Capitol.

However, I thought the first part was taking a bit too long. I do realize that the reader has to know background information before understanding what ‘the games’ are about, but I think that part of the story could be reduced in extensiveness. I became rather bored during the first part whereas I couldn’t stop reading once I got to the starting of the actual games.

Seeing the theory we discussed in class, it’s not a suitable book for children under the age of 10 as the characters are not stated as completely good or bad. I would advise the book to children around the ages of 15-17, as it is rather a complicated set up and I think younger children would find that too difficult to understand.

I think the book is great and written very clever, because every part that is discussed in the beginning keeps coming back, keeping the reader active. As every book intends, also in this book I can identify myself with the main character, the struggles she goes through and wanting to do everything for your family but getting in trouble no matter what. However, I can also quite well connect to Peeta; wanting to help others to be the best they can be even though it might mean having to refrain from what would be best for yourself. I think Peeta does this multiple times throughout the whole book i.e. taking the careers on to help Katniss escape.