Arts: Part Thoreau, Part Princess

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Culturebox Part Thoreau, Part Princess How The Hunger Games combines the wilderness survival tale with the Cinderella story—and subverts them both. By Stephen Burt Posted Thursday, Mar 22, 2012, at 05:15 PM ET Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games became a big hit in part by being many things to many people. Some fans take it as an allegory of high school, others as a critique of modern celebrity, and others still as a love story, since the tough capable heroine Katniss must ultimately choose between two young men. The novel and its sequels also play a particularly neat trick with two archetypal storylines which, before these books, seemed incompatible: They are at once a wilderness story—a narrative of rough nature and plucky survival—and a Cinderella story, in which a girl who never dressed up before becomes an object of romantic fantasy for the projections of fascinated adults. If you've spent the last year reading nothing but Tolstoy and Musil, you may not know that The Hunger Games and its two sequels take place in a future country called Panem, a totalitarian regime with a prosperous, decadent Capitol and 12 districts over which the Capitol rules. Each year the Capitol displays its power and cruelty in a televised spectacle called the Hunger Games: Two teens from each district, most selected by drawing lots, compete in a specially designed arena until only one teen remains alive. The books follow Katniss Everdeen, a poor girl from an impoverished coal-mining district, after she volunteers to take part in the Hunger Games in order to save her sister. The games themselves, and the lead-up to them, occupy the first book. The Hunger Games is part ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate George Zimmerman Reportedly Used Racial Slur on 911 Call Before Trayvon Martin Shooting Even the RNC's Rule 40(b) Will Not Stop Gingrich From Making Mischief at the Convention A Jets Fan on Tim Tebow's Trade to New York: Noooooo!	Advertisement
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