Read The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion Online
Authors: Lois H. Gresh
The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (29 page)
Accepts no responsibilities for his actions. | Yes |
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Control freak. | Yes |
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Sadistic—enjoys humiliating and hurting other people. | Yes |
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Sexually promiscuous or selling others for sexual purposes | Yes |
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Preys on others. | Yes |
For the moment, set aside the arguments about what defines evil versus good, whether our biological wiring determines evil versus good, and whether social environments are the main factors. It doesn’t matter how we define evil. It doesn’t matter if a man grew up in a tent, a trailer, a penthouse, a country estate, whatever. It doesn’t matter if he was born to a prince or a pauper. Regardless, we are left with one sad fact: People like President Snow are simply
bad people
. You might say that they’re
evil
. And when you study all the literature, you realize that scientists really don’t know why.
AD
1186–1524
AD 1186, John of Toledo determined that a planetary alignment would occur on September 23, 1186, causing the world to end.
Any second now
. . .AD 1260, Joachim of Fiore declared that the entire world would be destroyed between AD 1200 and 1260.
Any second now
. . .AD 1284, Pope Innocent III taught that the world would end 666 years after Islam began, corresponding to AD 1284.
Any second now
. . .AD 1346, no doomsday discussion can be complete without mentioning the Flagellants and the Black Death. Believing that the end of the world was imminent . . . yes, any second now . . . the Flagellants whipped and spiked people into bloody pulps to absolve them of their sins.
AD 1367, Militz of Kromeriz proclaimed that the Antichrist was already alive and would make himself known between AD 1363 and 1367, and that the end of the world would occur between AD 1365 and 1367. The precision of these prophecies, as well as many that came before Militz, are all quite remarkable, don’t you think?
AD 1378, Arnold of Villanova declared that the world would end in 1378.
AD 1420, Martinek Hausha declared that the world would end by February 14, 1420. Another precise calculation that didn’t amount to much.
AD 1516, the Fifth Lateran Council banned apocalyptic prophecies and all end-of-world doomsday scenarios. Needless to say, given future events, their proclamation didn’t take hold. Shortly after . . .
AD 1524, London astrologers created widespread apocalyptic terror by proclaiming that the end of the world would start by a flood in London on February 1. Tens of thousands of people fled. However, as these things tend to go, not a single drop of rain fell in London that day.
AD 1524, astrologer Johannes Stoeffler foretold that February 20 would mark the end of the world instead of February 1. It must have also been the year of global ocean terror because Stoeffler also claimed that a flood would bring about the apocalypse.
T
he awful thing is that if I can forget they’re people, it will be no different at all [from killing animals].” So thinks Katniss in
The Hunger Games
(40).
This statement occurs very early in the three-book series, and in many ways, it is a premonition of what is to come. In times of war, as discussed a bit in the previous chapter, soldiers may start to view the enemy as nothing more than objects. They are the “others,” no more human than a bug. In times of religious combat, such as during the Crusades or anywhere in the world today where terrorism occurs, the killers tend to forget that they are indeed murdering
human beings
. Children on one side of a border are no different from those on the other side: Both are living, breathing, thinking human beings. But as soldiers, crusaders, and terrorists grow more accustomed to acts of cruelty and killing, they slide into automatic pilot mode, and killing humans becomes no different from killing animals.
Katniss’s evolution into a killing machine takes time. At first, she kills animals so her family won’t starve. Her first solo hunt results in supplying a rabbit to her hungry mother and sister (
The Hunger Games
, 51). She’s killing for the same reason animals hunt in the wild: to survive. She doesn’t know it at the time, but soon, she’ll be forced to hunt and kill humans for the same reason: to survive.
In her first Hunger Games, she must kill other children in order to save her own life. The first person she kills—ever, in her entire life—is a boy who spears her friend Rue. After shooting an arrow into the boy’s neck, she wonders why she even cares about his death (
The Hunger Games
, 243). She has already evolved from a girl who had to learn how to hunt animals for food to someone capable of murder. And while, yes, eventually she would have to kill the boy anyway to become the winning tribute, she kills him without thinking in a cold act of retaliation. She’s angry that Rue is dead, and she wants him to pay.
Somehow, the reader empathizes with her and is pleased when she kills the boy who took poor Rue’s life. Even we, the readers who are not in combat at all, understand why Katniss has killed another person. In fact, we identify so strongly with Katniss that we want her to emerge from the Games as the victor, and we know this means she must kill multiple children. We see Rue’s murderer as “evil” and we see no reason why Katniss shouldn’t do away with him and save her own neck.
Even after her cold act of retribution, she identifies with the dead boy and those who mourn for him. She is not a killer at heart. Not yet.
By the time Katniss is in the thick of battle in the second book, she thinks like a killer: “I make a silent promise to return and finish [Beetee] off if I can,” (
Catching Fire
, 383). And by the time she leads the revolution in the third book, she blames herself for the hideous deaths of a lot of her companions, and worse, she is directly responsible for killing an “unarmed citizen” (
Mockingjay
, 323).
How do people like Katniss and Peeta become killer kids? What makes a sweet, innocent child turn to murder?
Clearly, Katniss and Peeta must kill in order to remain alive. But Katniss herself comments more than once that she’s become a killing machine, a killer, someone who actually mows down an unarmed woman. At what point does a
child
shift from killing for survival to killing
out of habit
?
We’ve all seen photos of children holding machines guns with caps pulled low over their too-old eyes. The pictures are jarring because we don’t associate the innocence of children with the evil of mass murder. Who puts deadly weapons into the hands of their young and sends them out to slay victims? Well, we know the Capitol and their Gamemakers do it, but in the real world, leaders have been doing the same thing since the dawn of time. The gladiator ring, while prevalent for a century in ancient Rome, is another matter (see chapter 4, “Tributes: Gladiators in the Arena”). But sending kids out to torture and murder is such a global phenomenon that it’s almost chillingly common.
There’s something profoundly disturbing about the idea of killer kids, whether in Hunger Games arenas, in the ancient gladiator battles, or in adult warfare. Humanitarians claim that it should be a war crime for adults to enlist children in warfare. They argue that innocent, vulnerable children are manipulated and lured into service and given light-weight weapons that turn them into killing machines. While this is true to some extent, it’s not entirely true. Take Katniss Everdeen as a fictional example of what is also true in the real world. In
Mockingjay
, Katniss leads a rebellion because it is the only recourse the people have to find freedom. Though she resists the role for a long time, in the end, she takes on the leadership. A posse of adult generals doesn’t show up in her town, kidnap her, and brainwash her to bear light-weight weapons and slaughter hundreds of innocent people. She rebels and fights against the posse of adults who have enslaved and tortured her people since the Dark Days.
