Phase 2: The Hunger Games

"When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market...even at home, where i am less pleasant, i avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or The Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?" (Collins 6).

          It is a shame how Katniss feels that she has to be the head of her household, but even more a shame that she has to live her life feeling like she has been censored. In this passage Katniss explains her experience as a child when she scares her mother by talking about the rulers of District 12 from the Capitol. The mere fact that her mother was so paranoid about this is a testament to the fact that their society in District 12 is dystopian. More specifically, this is a dystopia in which the government has so much control over the citizens that they have a fear of the outside world, they conform to the uniform expectations, citizens are perceived to be under constant surveillance, and that propaganda is used to control the citizens of the society.
          The purpose of the passage is to provide a setting for the rest of the book. The beginning of the novel is used to synthesize the world that they live in. Collins uses techniques in this passage such as using specific examples and metaphors of an indifferent mask throughout the beginning sections of the book to establish the dystopian society. By the end of the first few chapters it is evident that the overall affect is has on the audience is that the society they live in especially in District 12 is one of poverty and the unfortunate lifestyle of miners who are in constant surveillance, and must conform to the norms of the expectations of government officials, or else they will suffer the same fate as the former District 13.
          In essence when we think about how this applies to us now, being human in a world that we think is not corrupt, perhaps we think that being human entitles us to our own thoughts. Since this passage seems to establish that the humans in The Hunger Games live in a dehumanized state in the Districts, being human in our current society basically means the opposite of what they are being put through. As humans we enjoy the luxury of freedom, and the depiction that Collins draws about the future, makes it seem that with all the theories of 2012 and the end of the world, that maybe instead of this being propaganda, it will soon be the fate of us humans in about a year. This does however, go back to a previous post about the God-like figure who had seen the future, and is telling people of the present to go back. Maybe the future really does hold a similar fate as it does in The Hunger Games, so we should listen to the man, and go back to the past where things seem simple, and we can live life as we have always known it to be.