Phase 2: Unknown Districts

"It's interesting, hearing about her life. We have so little communication with anyone outside our district. In fact, I wonder if the Gamemakers are blocking out our conversation, because even though the information seems harmless, they don't want people in different districts to know about one another" (Collins 283).


          Imagine a life in the present, where you weren't aloud to know anybody outside of your hometown. I don't know what I would do if I was stuck in Malden, knowing that if I tried to leave, I would be dead or killed. This is in a nutshell, what Katniss is saying in this passage. As this is her first time hearing about another person's life outside of District 12, she finds is interesting. She then comes to the realization that the government has such relentless regulations that she doesn't know anything about anybody else outside of her District. Is this a technique of the government? she wonders. She then adds that although the information that is exchanged between one another between districts may be harmless, that the government further protects each district from one another as a safety precaution. I feel like the government is scared that if rebellion does break out, they won't have anything to do if all the districts collectively rebel.
          The overall effect of the passage is that Katniss has been thinking about the life that she has been living. Beginning to evaluate this life she has lived is prompting her to realize how stifled she has been her whole life. Collins purposely makes her interactions with other characters this way to show the growth of Katniss as a character developing into a dystopian protagonist. In the context of the passage, since she had just found out about the life of another, she realizes that the makers of The Hunger Games controls the information each district knows about each other, and therefore helps the government by making each district unknown by others. This censorship of information keeps each district isolated and therefore easier to manage.
          Again, this connects to the question on what it means to be human. With freedom there is knowledge of exploration. One of the important things about being human to me, is that humans gain knowledge. And by leaving the walls of our home, and meeting new people, that knowledge is expanded by a great amount. But the passage also reveals that in the present by contrast we are free and we are fortunate enough not to live in the relentless regulations that they have to go through in each District in Panem. However, this future does make me think in perspective of if the government ever tried to control us this way, what would I do? I believe that especially growing up in a Democratic state such as Massachusetts, that there would be too many protesters collectively from all over the country that would make such control impossible.
          This passage reminds me of Wall-E and the fact that Wall-E was stranded on Earth while all other inhabitants moved up into space. All of Wall-E's life was spent on Earth cleaning the rubbish junk that was left there after the natural disaster. Wall-E had no information of what life was beyond his job cleaning Earth just as Katniss and other inhabitants of the district have no idea what life is outside of their own.