The Unofficial Hunger Games Companion (9 page)

In the late 1800s, Giovanni Succi performed as a hunger artist throughout Europe. He starved himself amidst cheers and adulation, and while not performing, often occupied a cell in a mental institution.

In 1922, Franz Kafka wrote his famous short story, “The Hunger Artist,” in which his main character is much like Giovanni Succi: He’s a professional faster who eats nothing for weeks at a time, then moves to the next town to repeat the starvation process. He’s entertainment! The people love to watch him starve! Yet as with all entertainers, eventually the hunger artist is no longer popular with the masses, who have moved to their fleeting next obsession. The hunger artist withers away and right before dying, he confesses that he just never found any food worth eating. It was easy for him to starve, he says.

As recently as 2003, the magician David Blaine starved himself at length to entertain people. He lasted much longer than any typical person, who after starving himself two or three weeks, would probably die.

Thousands of fans showed up to watch Blaine finish his forty-four-day fast. It was even on television. According to BBC News, “He will spend 44 days suspended beside the London river. During that time he will apparently go without food and will only have access to water fed through a tube. Sky One showed live coverage of Blaine’s entry into the box on Friday evening and will show highlights for the following 44 days, with Channel 4 showing the footage three days later.”
¹¹
An accompanying BBC diagram shows the effects of potential starvation on Blaine, including “organ failure by 6 weeks.”

After emerging from the box, Blaine recuperated in a private hospital. According to CNN World, he “experienced an irregular heartbeat during his time in the box . . . caused by a lack of potassium and thinning of the heart’s walls, according to a statement on his Web site.”
¹²
He also experienced stomach cramps after emerging from the box, and he had trouble sleeping. Overall, he lost fifty-five pounds during the fast.

ANOREXIA AND BULIMIA:
STARVATION ON PURPOSE

While everyone else is starving, the people in the Capitol are gorging and throwing up. They want to be thin, they want to starve down to anorexic “appeal,” but they also want to eat like gluttons.

The starvation is so horrific in the districts that children often put their names in the lottery more than the required number of times so they can obtain tesserae and feed their families. Katniss tells us early in
The Hunger Games
that a tessera equals a “meager year’s supply of grain and oil for one person” (
The Hunger Games
, 13).

This grain allotment is similar to the grain doles in ancient Rome except a lottery wasn’t held in Rome. Instead, officials doled out grain to people from the Temple of Ceres. As in the world of The Hunger Games, starvation and extreme hunger were common in the ancient world. Everyone relied on grain to survive.

People outside of the cities depended almost solely on the grain they grew in fields; and if a crop failed, everyone starved. But in the cities, things were even worse because the impoverished depended on imported grain and doles, and they couldn’t hunt or gather wild plants in lean times. By 100
BC
, Rome’s population was approximately 1 million, and famine was so extreme that during grain shortages, officials would drive lowly people—slaves and criminal gladiators—out of the city.

For political reasons, the dole allotted grain to every Roman citizen once a month. Each person was
sold
thirty pounds of grain at a fixed price. Eventually, by 90
BC
, Lucius Cornelius Sulla abolished the dole because for political reasons, he didn’t care about the votes of all the poor citizens. After he died, again for political reasons, the dole was established once again. By 44
BC
, hundreds of thousands of people were receiving free grain rations every month. But in 44
BC
, Julius Caesar cracked down on the free supplies, allowing only 150,000 people to collect their monthly rations.

The phrase “Bread and Circuses,” which we discuss in chapter 4, “Tributes: Gladiators in the Arena,” referred to the free grain dole (the bread) along with the gladiatorial games (the circuses). While the people who live in the Capitol in The Hunger Games have empty lives with little meaning—acting as consumers of food and products and creating little value—this was also the case in developing Rome.

At sixteen, Katniss puts her name in the lottery—the reaping—twenty times, and poor eighteen-year-old Gale puts his name in forty-two times (
The Hunger Games
, 13). They put themselves at serious risk of death to get grain and oil, which barely qualifies as a fully balanced diet. As noted earlier, you have to wonder how anyone lives past a very young age with this sparse and inadequate diet. If your family is lucky to have someone like Katniss or Gale who can hunt and fish for you, maybe then you have a chance of surviving—assuming you’re in a district with animals and fish. If you’re in a district where you can gather fruits, berries, and vegetables, you’re also lucky. But keep in mind that even in the agricultural district where Rue grows up, the very people who farm the food aren’t allowed to indulge. So it’s a no-win situation, and how people survive on basically grain and oil has to be a serious problem.

Anorexia is the opposite of the unwanted starvation that Katniss and her community face. People can die from anorexia, just as with starvation for any other reason. Most people with anorexia are female.

Anorexia has actually been around for longer than most people think. For example, Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–80), ritually starved herself while receiving Holy Communion almost daily. In her case, the starvation may have been a case of extreme asceticism, as she professed no interest in earthly matters such as food. She separated her body from her spirit by taking Holy Communion but nothing else. It seems she either became intensely ill due to starvation or she suffered from bulimia; whenever she swallowed anything beyond a few herbs, she forced herself to throw up.

In general, the term
anorexia mirabilis
is given to females who starved themselves on purpose during the Middle Ages. As with Saint Catherine of Siena, the condition was associated with asceticism, the desire to starve in the name of God. Other methods of hurting the body and devoting one’s spirit to God included self-flagellation, sleeping on beds made out of thorns, and self-mutilation.

Saint Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) not only starved herself, but she supposedly ate scabs, lice, and pus from the bodies of sick people.
¹³

Saint Veronica regularly starved herself for three days at a time, during which she would instead chew five orange seeds in honor of Jesus’ five wounds.

While the Middle Ages produced a lot of women with anorexia mirabilis, the condition has also existed in modern times. For example, Alexandrina Maria da Costa (1904–55) died from anorexia mirabilis. According to the Vatican, she “fell in love with suffering” and stopped Hunger 47 eating. For “forty days” she starved herself in honor of God.
¹⁴

Contrast all these women who starve on purpose to Katniss Everdeen and everyone she knows and loves. According to Gale, the tesserae are a weapon that the Capitol uses to “plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure we will never trust one another” (
The Hunger Games
, 14). The implication is that some people in District 12 have plenty to eat while others starve, hence causing strife
inside
the community.

But at the Capitol level, the difference is far more extreme. Even en route to her first Games, Katniss experiences the pleasures of gluttony. But while she eats her lavish, full-course meal, Effie makes a stray comment about the piggish eating habits of former District 12 tributes. Katniss’s anger and resentment gurgle up, and she finishes her meal like a barbarian with no manners. In a small way, she’s revolting against what she sees as gross injustice. It’s not much, but repressed people with no recourse can’t do anything more than display small gestures of rebellion.

But what’s really bizarre is when the people of the Capitol eat too much, purge the food, and then eat again. They all have bulimia. As Octavia says in
Catching Fire
, how else would they have any fun at their feasts (
Catching Fire
, 79)? This may actually be a turning point in the entire saga, because Peeta comments that he just doesn’t know how much more he can stand. When repressed people suffer injustices and indignities, when they’re pushed to their limits, they do eventually rebel. And it’s at this point that Peeta tells Katniss that maybe they were wrong “about trying to subdue things in the districts.” (
Catching Fire
, 81).

In ancient Rome, gladiatorial banquets for the spectators were orgies of gluttony and bulimia. As in The Hunger Games world, exotic and rich dishes were served in vast quantities. A Roman gladiatorial banquet might include pickled tuna, eggs, cheese, olives, wild fowl, hens, boar, gazelle, hare, antelope, and flamingo. The wealthy spectators ate with their hands and demanded that slaves clean their hands periodically so they could eat more, and yet more. People vomited so they could continue to eat more, and yet more.

We’re not really sure if Marie Antoinette actually said, “Let them eat cake,” but we are sure that while she ate plenty of cake, the French people starved. This is very similar to what’s going on in the Capitol, that while people eat cake, the rest of the population starves. The 2006 film
Marie Antoinette
, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Kirsten Durst, shows the dichotomy between gluttony and starvation very well.

HUNGER STRIKES AND ASCETICISM:
STARVATION ON PURPOSE

In many societies, hunger strikes are viewed as noble and divinely inspired events. Think about Mahatma Gandhi, for example, who starved himself in hopes of promoting peace and salvation. Or about all the monks who starve to bring themselves closer to God.

Indeed, many of the world’s religions and intellectuals suggest that starving ourselves will bring us health, happiness, and spiritual fulfillment. Buddha, Mohammed, and Jesus all fasted, as did both Plato and Socrates. Ancient physicians such as Hippocrates and Paracelsus prescribed fasting to cure a variety of maladies. And even Pythagoras fasted for forty days.

Most religions suggest that people fast on certain days each year. Cleansing of the body, we’re told, helps cleanse our souls. By fasting, we ask God to forgive us for our sins; we focus on spiritual matters rather than physical ones.