I was about 12 years old when I first read The Hunger Games.
Actually, my story with The Hunger Games began when I was only 11. It was the first time I was going out without my parents, just with friends (yep, it was an adventure), my friend told me we were going to the movies. The movie? The Hunger Games.
The funny thing is that I had no idea what it was about, so I was surprised when I saw kids killing each other. Well… an adventure.
So fast forward, I fell in love with The Hunger Games when Catching on Fire was released. It was the year I decided to read all the books. I was in my bookworm era so I don’t even have to say that it easily became an obsession.
That is why I wrote this article. I apologize in advance because it is long. Very long. The longest article I have written so far, but hey, it is The Hunger Games. Plus, I gathered expert opinions and, of course, fans.
People watching The Hunger Games, released in 2012, saw the name Katniss Everdeen being called by Effie Trinket in the Reaping. Now, people watching the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, released in 2023, more than 10 years later, see the name Lucy Gray being called in the Reaping with the same expectation.
The Hunger Games, for those who don’t know, and if you are reading this, I REALLY hope you know, is a young adult series of books published by Suzanne Collins in 2008. The book is a dystopia set in Panem, a fictional sovereign nuclear state and democratic constitutional republic. Panem includes the Capitol, a rich place, and 13 districts who live in poverty. Every year a boy and girl from each district is selected in a lottery to participate in The Hunger Games, a televised program in which the kids have to fight for their survival and kill the other participants until there is just one victor.
In 2012, The Hunger Games had its first cinematographic adaptation. Produced by Lionsgate, it was a blockbuster success. According to the Numbers, the production of the first movie budget was $80,000,000, and on the opening weekend, it made $152,535,747.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes book was released in 2020. It is a prequel from The Hunger Games, which was first published in 2008. The book follows young Snow and the development of the games that the public know and are familiar with today. Even though the last The Hunger Games book was published 10 years before, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was a bestseller. On Nov. 17, 2023, the movie was officially released and it promised to be as good as the other movies. After so many years, the universe and dystopia still have a lot of fans around the world, this is how big of an influence these little books and movies had.
“The Hunger Games didn't invent that certain type of dystopian story that it started, but it certainly stimulated the growth and prospering of that genre. And after Hunger Games came out, there were a lot of books that were a lot more imitations trying to capture that same kind of excitement,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture in Syracuse University.
In a small survey I conducted, out of 83 people from several ages, ranging from 11 to 68 years, only one person didn’t know what The Hunger Games is. Thompson said that just like Harry Potter it was a big phenomenon at that time.
“There's always been classic kids books and generations of kids. some of them would discover the Tolkien books, the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and all of that. But this idea of reading and books coming out in a series and being, being something that young people were embracing and looking forward to, that was kind of a new thing. I mean, that really does start to a great extent,” Thompson said.
Thompson compared the Hunger Games with Harry Potter. He said that at that time, although people looked forward to books before, it was never anything quite what happened with Harry Potter. He said that maybe young people would look forward to reading comics and new releases, but they wouldn't line up at midnight at Barnes and Noble, dressing up to get those books.
“We had tie-ins before but they tended to be more toward, to, you know, comic books or movies or TV shows,” Thompson said. “So Harry Potter kind of starts that new way of a post literate culture that doesn't emphasize reading nearly as much as previous ones did to somehow embrace in new ways, reading books. And Harry Potter was the happiest day for librarians and school teachers around the country.”
Thompson also commented that he thinks 12 years old is the perfect age to read the series.
“I think that's a you know, by 12 you're really starting to, you know, come into your own identity. You're a good enough reader by 12 that you can really, you know, plow through it. I think the same with Harry Potter. I can't think of a better age to come to that for the first time than, you know, 12, 13, something like that,” he said.
The professor believes that if you are much younger, you might not quite get as well as you can when you are 12. In two interviews made with two fans, both read The Hunger Games for the first time when they were 12 years old for a school assignment.
Professor Jen Curwood is a literacy researcher and associate professor at the University of Sydney in Australia and wrote a research paper about the influence of The Hunger Games in young students.
About 14 years ago, she became interested in how young people engage with The Hunger Games outside of school. Many young people were drawn to the series and became part of the wider fandom, participating in activities like reading, writing, and creating fan art.
Curwood said that The Hunger Games has influenced young people and provided them with a sense of agency in a world where they face challenges and conflicts. Fandoms have become an important aspect of young people's lives, allowing them to actively participate and express themselves.
“As a former high school teacher, I think it's really fascinating when young people are engaging in reading, writing and designing practices outside of school time. I think that's something that teachers often don't see or appreciate or understand,” Curwood said.
Curwood said that young people's self sponsored and literacy practices are something that we should attend to and think about what is compelling them to engage in those literacy practices.
“So I saw that for a lot of young people, The Hunger Games was like the first book that they couldn't put down. And, you know, they were, while they're waiting for the other books in the trilogy to come out, they're so taken, you know, with the characters and the setting and the theme that a lot of them just went to Google and they looked up The Hunger Games and they assemble into the wider fandom,” she said. “And from there they were able to read, write critique of fan fiction, take part in fan art. And then just going to consume kind of the additional, it's called para these parallel texts that existed through the main text.”
In her opinion, The Hunger Games, along with other series like Harry Potter, focuses on relationships, conflict, and the power of young people to make a difference. This resonates with young people who often feel disempowered in their daily lives. The Hunger Games continues to be relevant in our generation, offering a space for young people to engage with powerful narratives and find inspiration to take action.
Nicole Silos, 24, has an Instagram account dedicated only for The Hunger Games. The account was created in 2013 because she wanted to share her love for the series and to meet other people online who also love the book and movies.
Silos read The Hunger Games in 2011. She was in 7th grade and her literature teacher assigned the book as part of the school curriculum.
“I do think the series has changed my life in many ways. I consider the books to have been what kickstarted my love for reading,” she said. “The movie franchise played a big part in helping me decide what I wanted to major in throughout college and even after almost a decade, the series continues to resonate with me in my 20s.”
Silos has a bachelor of science in marketing. She said that in 2012 she was obsessed and the marketing campaign execution behind the movie franchise caught her attention, leading her to get a marketing degree.
In the survey, most of the people who voted that the series was relevant in their lives, either said that it was because of the subjects inserted in the plot, such as politics, people expressing themselves, the system we currently live in, or because it was the book that led them to be a reader.
“I love that this book and the rest of the trilogy has an independent female protagonist who navigates being the face of a revolution in such a cruel dystopian setting,” she said. “What I love the most about the story is that although fictional, it explores a number of themes and issues that we see on a day-to-day basis, and I feel like that’s a big part of why it continued to have an impact on me through all these years.”
Jeremy Smalls, 23, also has an Instagram account for The Hunger Games, and it has more than 18 thousand followers. He also read The Hunger Games for a summer reading assignment in 2012.
“I quickly fell in love and watched the movie afterwards. I then read the rest of the series and eagerly awaited the next movies as they came out,” Smalls said. “I loved because I was a big history and civics nerd so the themes in the books and movies stuck to me, along with the lovable characters.”
Smalls was also an example of how The Hunger Games had an influence in his future. It was the first series that got him into reading and the movies made him consider that filmmaking and video production could be a possible career for him. Today, Smalls is a freelance videographer and video editor.
Eight years after the release of The Mockingjay, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was able to make $197.27 million on the first 5 days of release, according to the Collider.
The new movie was able to bring back some old memories and even get some new readers to read the trilogy.
Caio Fernandes, 18, believes he is a huge reader. His favorite literary genres are mystery, adventure and dystopia. Even though he loves dystopia, he just started reading The Hunger Games.
“I never had that feeling in my mind that I wanted to read it. It only happened after I watched The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes adaptation,” he said.
Fernandes said that it has been a wonderful experience and that is very different from what he imagined it would be. He expected something epic in the standards we see in YA books, but The Hunger Games has a much more serious and even raw approach than usual, it was a very positive surprise for him.
“Even though I am still reading the last book, it has already marked my life in some way. In addition to bringing iconic moments that I will carry with me forever, these books have weight and importance. I would say they are the kind of must-read that everyone has to give a chance at least once in their life,” Fernandes said.
Fernandes also added that The Hunger Games teaches lessons in storytelling and adaptation. He thinks it's crucial to bring people together, provoke thoughts and bring that good feeling that we get when we really like something.
“Every book has a social function and a commitment to reality, and The Hunger Games is no different,” he said. “I believe that this series is crucial for working on our critical thinking about how we act and think, how we are passive in certain situations and challenges, especially when it comes to other people's lives as a function of or to the detriment of our own.”
Silos said that the books also gave her opportunities and helped her to make some of her most important friendships in her life. Both Silos and Smalls worked with Scholastic and Lionsgate in the past year for the prequel movie release.
“These opportunities felt very full circle for me as I had loved the marketing for the films as a teen, and so to play a small part in the marketing for this new film was surreal,” Silos said. “The books and movies have also allowed me to connect with such a diverse range of people over the years who live in different states and countries and maintain friendship with them.”
Curwood said that the reason why the books were such a success involved more than the plot. It was a series that got a lot of young people into reading and seeing the possibilities of doing more than just reading.
“More than just consuming, they moved into the producing role, right? And they were, you know, writing and creating art and, and taking part in the wider fandom. And I think that for a lot of young people that's been something that's, you know, wasn't available really to the extent it was, you know, 20 or 30 years ago,” she said.
Thompson also believes that The Hunger Games made some young people feel like they were part of something.
“Those books also brought a sense of a love of literature or just the movies, a love of a certain kind of a, a storytelling teaching somebody how to become completely engrossed in a narrative world. I think is an important part of one, one's education as a human being,” he said. “One of the things we are capable of doing is to emerge and be enlightened by fiction and because we're capable of doing it and because it can be so rewarding, I think we should teach people how to do it and I think those books did.”
And this is just a small part of the relevance The Hunger Games have and still have in our generation.
Maybe I have bias, maybe not, but this article and all these opinions are not just mine. The Hunger Games, along with Maze Runner, Divergent, Percy Jackson, marked a whole generation of young people that actually started to read because of Percy, Katniss, and all these characters we very much love.
And I am, and will forever be very grateful to them.
Stick with the drama, and see you soon
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