Fictional Literary Influences on “The Hunger Games” Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

Dystopian literature did not have a cemented and established place in literary genres until books like George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World gained popularity for their almost prophetic takes on future societies with a dark spin. These soon became a blueprint for future authors looking to write dystopian stories and almost all of them are influenced by these in some way or another.

The Hunger Games, another dystopian novel published in 2008, set in a world where totalitarian government spies and controls its population through technology and force, gained popularity in the 2010s and was revered in the YA community.  To delve even deeper it is common for most authors to get their ideas from real life, and it is well known that Orwell and Huxley were influenced by the Nazi Regime and Communist regimes that were taking place in the 20^th century.

To begin picking apart the innards of what inspired the events and characters of this book one may be inclined to read what the author themselves have said about the matter. Govindini Murty in his paper “Decoding the Influences in ‘Hunger Games,’” From ‘Spartacus’ to ‘Survivor’ talks about greek mythologies that the author was inspired by.  In several interviews, Suzanne Collins mentions the Greek story of Theseus and the Minotaur as an important inspiration for the world of Panem.

The similarities and differences are thought-provoking so to look into the story is worthwhile. Theseus was the son of both Aegeus, the King of Athens, and also the god Poseidon—both of whom apparently slept with Theseus’s mother Aethra in the same night. After King Minos of Crete defeated the Athenians in war, he demanded that they send an annual tribute of seven of their most handsome youths and seven of their best-looking maidens to Crete. There they would be eaten by the Minotaur in the Labyrinth made by Daedalus. Angered by this savage practice, Theseus volunteered to be a tribute one year. He went to Crete where Minos’s daughter Ariadne helped him to make his path through the Labyrinth and exterminate the Minotaur.

In doing so, he saved Athens from the terrible sacrifice of its youth and became the king and unifier of the nation. As in the myth of Theseus, the 12 districts of Panem in The Hunger Games are to send young male and female tributes to certain death at the hands of monstrous power. And like Theseus, who volunteers to be a tribute in order to kill the Minotaur, Katniss volunteers to be a tribute in order to defy Panem’s efforts to sacrifice children like her 12-year old sister. In her ability to fight, Katniss is also similar to the legendary warrior women of the Amazons. The Amazon queen Hippolyta was the first wife of Theseus and the mother of his son Hippolytus. This story falls in line in several ways with The Hunger Games. The people of Athens were appalled by their situation (whereas Panem is distracted by the spectacle of the reality show), Katniss has an awareness of injustice and resilience that recalls Theseus. Likewise, she succeeds not only through her personal strength but through romance, in her case with Peeta, in Theseus’s case with Minos’s daughter.

Lastly, the unnecessary cruelty involved with both games makes one ponder the level of evil humans can achieve, even when separated by centuries. It is relevant to the themes of the book that the cruelty of Panem’s regime is not singular. The Greek legend presents that such brutality has been part of human thought even though historically human tributes were more likely kept alive as slaves rather than fed to angry hybrids,

Another important piece of literature that The Hunger Games takes a page from is 1984 by George Orwell. A circumstance that is similar emerges in the Hunger Games where the Capital and the rebellious District 13 are in a state of assured destruction from both sides because during the rebellion each acquired part of Panem’s nuclear weapons stockpile. That creates a situation where the Capital can exert its control over the remaining districts.b Orwell dramatizes the Thoughtpolice’s strength and the terror they can evoke with their ultimate torture instrument, Room 101, by showing how they get the lovers Winston and Julia to become each other’s traitors. Winston screams out to “torture Julia instead.” when he is confronted with his personal nightmare of having his face eaten by vermin. In Mockingjay, the final Hunger Games book, Peeta whose desire for Katniss has been unshakable throughout the story is flipped (i.e. brainwashed) to hate her with violent tendencies.

President Snow in the story maintains his power by relying on a rather Orwellian case of terror.  While the Hunger Games may be set in a land whose name comes from the Latin phrase ‘panem et circenses’ (bread and circuses) there is no sense its rulers are trying to earn the people’s affection. Rather it is the looming terror of violence from Panem’s paramilitary ‘peacekeepers’ that keeps them in control. While the Games themselves may at least in part have been inspired by gladiatorial games and are described by characters as being meant to serve as a ‘distraction’, that doesn’t seem to be their real purpose. Rather they are a display of an unsuccessful rebellion against the Capital and an implicit warning not to try again.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games both consist of scary futuristic societies that have strict social hierarchies. While the details of the novel are different, one significant frequent denominator is that both rely heavily on capitalist exploitation by means of class division and lack of resources. The population of the World State in Huxley’s novel is split into five groups– the elite Alphas and Betas, and the inferior Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons – all born through controlled reproduction.

People are brainwashed from birth to value consumerism and to strictly follow the segregation and norms of their class. The aim of this self-orchestrated centralized economy is to maintain stability by bolstering economic growth and full employment and constantly demonizing self-reflexivity and activities based around being alone. The continent of Panem in Collins’ work is divided following a civil war, with the winning Capitol at the center and twelve Districts at the outbound. Each struggling District is tasked with the production of a specific resource for the rich Capitol, as well as offering two children each year for the brutal gladiatorial Hunger Games that is meant to be a reminder of their losing the war. The elite groups – Alphas and Betas for Huxley, the Capitol for Collins – are numerical minorities, yet the system continues to function unopposed for decades in both cases. The biggest contributor to this long length of time is how the dynamics of class division are manipulated to prevent the oppressed groups from combining into a union.. The extreme consumerism in Brave New World is so deeply embedded that no one can offer an appropriate option.

In order to push this supremacy further, a recreational drug called soma is rationed out to the various groups depending on their successes – Alphas and Betas having greater access to it than the others – the addiction to which makes Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons more amenable to stick to their expected tasks. The titular Hunger Games, meanwhile, not only increases the competition between the Districts but also gives a suitable reward for the winner – an entire year’s supply of food for their District. Even though the Games themselves are a means of displaying the might of the Capitol, the prize at the end shapes expectations from an early age, making individuals more likely to buy into the system of exploitation, even in moments of severe personal danger, than try to overthrow it.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood has a lot in common with The Hunger Games. They both are set in a dystopian future in which things have deteriorated and the people are oppressed by the new world order. In Games, the Capitol has all the power and wealth while the other districts have nothing but squalor; specifically, District 12 represents the abject poverty that can happen in such a world, and we know that the same thing can happen to other districts. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the men have all the power and the women are relegated to bearing and raising children and being wives.

Of course, the concept reaches much further than this, and this kind of oppression is possible for other groups who are not strong enough to stand up to those in control. These themes of oppression and strict control are reflected in the hunger games.

Read about Modernist English Literature here.