If you can remember way back when (or just scroll down) I was actually posting weekly, I still have to do the final piece of my three-part Hunger Games review. Today we’re talking about the plot progression of the famous trilogy. I am again going to skip a long introduction, as I don’t want my reviews to be repetitive. Instead, we’re going to have a little lightning-round recap of everything I’ve said (because I would tell you to go back and read those, but I don’t want you to stop reading this one). In the first review, I did all-things-main-characters. That includes Katniss (a queen with a beautiful arc who spends half the series not deserving Peeta), Peeta (the boy with the bread who is too good for their harsh world), and Gale (a selfish, psychotic “love interest” who never has and never will deserve Katniss, even if he is played by a Hemsworth). In my second review, I moved on to minor characters (and yet still found time to rant about Gale). I talked about Rue, who didn’t deserve to die and lived a life too hard for such a little girl. I talked about Prim, who didn’t get much character development in the first two books, but was still a nice character to read about and also didn’t deserve to die. I then went on to say that maybe President Snow is evil only because that was the only option he ever had (not making him any less evil, mind you), and that Haymitch Abernathy is really annoying and never tells Katniss anything.
Okay. Lightning round over. Let’s get this show on the road and begin talking plotline.
It’s hard to pick a favorite Hunger Games book because they were all the same amount amazing. That is to say, I loved them all but found some faults in all of them. If you made me pick which one is my favorite right now, though, I’d have to go with the first one.
The original Hunger Games introduces this crazy world and this crazy scenario. It’s straight through and has the clearest goal of them all: win the Games. I guess you could say that the second has the same goal, but they’re the winners of the previous year. Some of the people they are going against are old and inept (no shade though, I love most of the new characters in Catching Fire). This isn’t Katniss and Peeta’s first time around, and they’re certainly not underdogs. And, yeah, the underdogs thing is really important to this story. The Capitol was working against them in their seconds Games, but the Capitol government isn’t the only factor of who wins, or really even the biggest factor. In the sequel, the opponents, alliances, and sponsors are what matters, and Katniss and Peeta were on the best side of all of those for the sequel. Being hated by mostly everyone in the first book made it scarier. There were really strong, well-loved opponents that wanted to kill specifically Katniss, the most important being Cato.
Cato is a character that I didn’t think important enough to mention in my minor characters review, but looking back now , he’s kind of a big deal. The first Games would be a little boring without him. He was this perfect representation of the Capitol and their views, an expected fan-favorite, but when Katniss got a near-perfect score, there was nothing he wanted more than to kill her. This created a threat within the Games—within them more than the Capitol’s control over the terrain because Cato was a living person, not just a man-made fire. He had his own mind. And I feel like the second and third don’t have someone like that. Yeah, there’s President Snow, but he’s some ominous figurehead that seemingly has control over literally everything. Cato is almost an equal with Katniss, which I like. I like that she would sort of have a fair chance if there weren’t all of the added obstacles. It creates some interesting what-ifs, some interesting twists in the plot. He’s a variable that the Capitol can only control so much once he’s in the Games.
The first book is also a common dystopian main idea and story arc. I’m not much of a dystopian person, but I do know that in many of them, it’s set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, seemingly utopian world, much like the Capitol and Districts. The main character is often involved in the underbrush of this world—the sets that the government will never allow on camera, or maybe doesn’t tell many about. The Hunger Games as a book fits into many dystopian boxes, making it more planned out and perfected. Making it more practiced.
But is it better if the novel fits into boxes, or should it be something entirely new? Is it better that the other two books are less cookie-cutter, or should we prefer the first book, which is, essentially, a well-written common plotline?
Well, that’s all about people’s tastes. My favorite story is literally just the classic Cinderella (my regulars were shook when I revealed I liked something better than TFIOS), so I’m one for the cookie cutters. I would be happy if there were more just-plain-Cinderella movies and books. I don’t need it dressed up at all—maybe it could be modern high school, but other than that, give me the classic version. I’ll still love it and live for it. (Also I’d like to make clear that I do not, I repeat--DO NOT—think that The Hunger Games is a cookie cutter kind of book. It just fits into a common plotline, which is one of the things I like about it. That’s all I’m saying so don’t @ me please.)
This, however, is not Cinderella (you can see my full opinion on that story below). This is the Hunger Games Trilogy. And the sequel was pretty good, too, even if it didn’t fit into common dystopian boxes.
The sequel follows Katniss and Peeta their second time around in the Games. It’s the Quarter Quell (for the 75th Hunger Games), and that means that this time, every opponent is a previous winner. It was a great idea, with great new characters (Finnick I’m looking at you), but I don’t know—it felt like a repeat of the first, just with a few new characters, and they knew what they were doing a little more. I talked about the importance of the underdog portion of the story earlier, so now I want to talk about the confusion of this one. Maybe I read it too fast or something, but the plot felt less structured than the first. I felt like Suzanne Collins was just writing more about Katniss’s life, and let it go where it went. No changing it later—well, that’s a little harsh, I don’t mean it’s a first draft sort of novel. It’s just less planned. Less of an arc. That’s it—that’s what I mean! It was a stream of events, not a plotline with symbolism in each event, all leading to the meaningful ending.
I’m not saying that’s an easy thing to do. I’m writing a novel, and I get it, it’s really freaking hard, but I feel like Collins did it so well in The Hunger Games. In the first of the trilogy, think about that scene the night before Katniss and Peeta’s first Games. They’re both sitting up on the roof, and Peeta says that he wants “to die as [himself]…[he doesn’t want the Capitol to] turn [him] into some kind of monster that [he’s] not.” That’s an important turning point in Katniss’s character development because her reaction is embarrassment; she realizes that Peeta is pure—he is not willing to do anything, kill anyone, just to win. This creates more of a freak-out when she hears him with the Careers. This helps with the arc. In the sequel, I felt like that didn’t happen. A random two-person scene on a roof isn’t the set up for a character’s entire development.
I just realized that this is getting a little too long, so sorry to cut this short and cut out Mockingjay, but we’re wrapping it up here. Before I go I’d like to give a shout-out to the announcement of a Hunger Games prequel novel and movie from mid-June. It’s set to release in May 2020 (get hype!). Keep reading, readers.