Catching Fire (Hunger Games series) Reaction Paper

The Hunger Games series has intrigued me since the first time I read it. I thought it’d be tamer than the raw, brutal, physically and emotionally scarring story that it is. I’d been pondering these questions since then and now, the time has come for me to try and answer them myself.

Is the film Science Fiction? No.

By definition, science fiction is “a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology” (Wikipedia) like if people were time travelers or have contact with the extraterrestrials or where every human was wearing pajama-like clothing that was said to automatically adjust the temperature offered to the person. That is definitely not what the Hunger Games series is about. It is much better defined as a Dystopia story, which is defined to be “an imaginary place in a work of fiction where the characters lead dehumanized, fearful lives” (leaguewriters.com) which pretty much sums up what the Hunger Games series is. It was set on a time frame much further from the present and the Capitol people have futuristic equipment, so it makes it a wee bit science fiction-y, but, looking at the larger picture, it’s definitely a brutal post-apocalyptic world.

 Is the film a commentary on past, present and future human society? Yes.

Now, before you go haywire that I just said yes to a multiple choice question, give me the chance to defend myself that the question says ‘and’. So, as I have mentioned before, it takes place in the future; it is what human society could turn in to, given the circumstances. It is a commentary on the present, too, because the technology is not very far from what we have today. In fact, most of the districts are less tech-y, as we say it, than what we are today but that scale is balanced out by the futuristic styles and equipment of the Capitol (*spoiler* and of District 13. *cough*) As for the past, who says this situation hasn’t happened before? We’ve had dictatorships, communisms, aristocracies, and countless more types of government that are pretty much the same with what is happening in Panem. Remember the gladiators? Those are probably the ancestors of tributes. Like the fact that each District has its own specialty, communists departmentalize their work force but they tried to equitably distribute the products where as the distribution in Panem is much more like an aristocracy. And haven't we had rebellions before? It’s scary to think about but humans may have already walked down this road.

Do science, technology and society fail or succeed in the world of the 13 Districts? Mostly fail.

Society definitely failed in this world, as I have explained previously. But science and technology are a success-and-fail for me because, in Panem, science and technology definitely has advanced. The only problem was that society prevented it from reaching everyone, where as the purpose of having science and technology was to improve the lives of humans.