Introduction T1 112009117 Full text
government can have control over how its citizens live Duncan 1. Despite the story’s future
setting, as a citizen of a country filled with inequality and class divide, i t’s hard not to think
that in the future the rich will still have all the control.
The Hunger Games
has been adapted into a motion picture which received wide acclaims from viewers and movie critics, with the Rolling Stone calling it an “epic spectacle”
Kehe 2. As I watched the movie, the grandeur of the theme of a new world took me by surprise. The movie’s brilliance in captivating the viewers, including myself, is a sure sign
that the book is a must read. While watching the movie, something struck me, this story is not just about teenagers fighting each other to prove they are worthy of becoming victors and
ensuring they will survive. Both the novel and the movie,
The Hunger Games,
are giving a glimpse of what the future might look like: almost the same like our present. There will be
people who live in poverty, and also there will be people living lavishly with no worries about lacking everyday necessities. For this analysis, I will use the novel, as the book itself
gives an even sadder account of what the citizens in the districts of Panem have to endure to satisfy the needs of the people in the Capitol and the strict government.
The Hunger Games
is a novel written about the future North America after being obliterated, but it has risen again in the form of a new country, Panem. Within this new
country, new rules come to form which put the lower class society at a disadvantage. For those who do not live in the megacity of the Capitol, their whole life will only be to serve the
needs for those living in the Capitol. This unfairness, portrayed vividly throughout the book, creates a need to analyze how deep governments can enforce the capitalistic values in their
country. The dichotomy of poor and rich depicted in
The Hunger Games
is proof why Marxist criticism about the mistreatment of the poor is important
– class divide and struggle will still Rimun 2
be a subject of concern in the future as well. With regards to this class divide, we can see that the present state of Indonesia is evidence that we are currently living in a country where the
politicians live in comfort, yet the streets are still filled with homeless people and people barely surviving without money in their pockets. Just based on the history of Indonesia, the
poor have always struggled to live while the rich live in comfort. Whether a superpower country or a rising third-world country, there will be people who fall into the rich or poor
category, respectively, regardless of its government. Because I believe the subject of the stark
differences between the dominantly rich and the oppressed poor has been evident in the past, present and the future, this analysis is important to help readers be more aware of how the
social classes have always been unfair and are predicted to be unfair in the future. From what Suzanne Collins has interpreted through
The Hunger Games
, this topic about unfairness will remain a topic of concern in the future.
In analyzing the differing lifestyles that led to the exploitation and devaluation of the lower class society, I will use Marxist literary criticism to uncover traces of false
consciousness, hegemony, and reification present in Suzanne Collins’
The Hunger Games
. This analysis will evaluate how these three ideologies lead to the great divide between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat – those who ‘have’ and those who ‘have-not’ Tyson 54.
Through Marxism, the driving force behind all social and political activities in this book will be linked to economic power of the rich. Also, I seek to inform the readers of how influential
a person’s economic state can be to their own livelihood as exemplified through the novel’s two different groups of people, the people in the Capitol and in the districts
.
Consequently, these capitalistic values lead one powerful group to take advantage of its economic power to
rule over all the poor’s areas of lives.
Rimun 3