On my world, it means hope.

As my sister is so fond of pointing out, I've been unhealthily obsessed preoccupied with The Hunger Games lately. This happens pretty much every time a new book becomes popular, because I'll borrow the book to see why it's popular, I'll try to like it, fail, and then spend a lot of the time flummoxed by the attention the book is receiving. I do believe that the popularity of certain books says a lot about current cultural values, and that books have the powerful to influence people enormously, but if that's the case, I've become more and more unsettled by the popularity of books such as Twilight and The Hunger Games.

I came across this article today on whether The Hunger Games should be removed from a middle-school curriculum or not. I should start off by saying that I'm not against the teaching of current books, or fantasy/sci-fi books in particular, in the school curriculum. In fact, I really wish schools taught more fantasy. But I don't think it's a great idea to teach The Hunger Games.

If schools really wanted to teach dystopian stories, I'd say go for 1984. I don't think The Hunger Games has any message that's completely unique and must be taught to students for their intellectual growth. Dystopian societies are bad? Orwell says hi. Dictatorships are bad? History says hi. Romance is important? Jane Austen and 1000000+ other writers say hi.

Frankly, The Hunger Games does not have a lot of technical merit in the writing, which is a bigger reason why I don't think it should be taught. The number of factual and logical errors in the book is staggering and honestly quite embarrassing. The blatant protagonist-centered morality is appalling, as it renders almost every minor character a cardboard cutout.

But the most important reason as to why I don't think The Hunger Games should be taught is this: It has no profound message, it trivializes moral ambiguity, and it does not have strong feminist values. Quite the opposite, in fact.

One of the original arguments for pulling the book from the curriculum was its violence, to which supporters responded that the book actually contains anti-violence messages. First, yes, the book is violent--not so much in terms of R-rated graphic descriptions, although there is one scene near the end that left me more than a little disturbed--but more because of the underlying theme of killing children. Now, violence by itself usually isn't a reason not to teach a book in English class, and neither is child-killing. Just look at The Lord of the Flies as an example. Or Crime and Punishment, which is all about one murder. The problem is that The Hunger Games completely glosses over the morality of killing children. Each time Katniss murders another tribute in the games, the reader is only meant to feel triumph. Look, Katniss eliminated another opponent! Now she's one closer to winning the Hunger Games! Isn't that great?

No. Books like Crime and Punishment do not, in any way, lessen the horror of murder. In The Lord of the Flies, murder is used to show just how degenerate the characters have become. That is what should have happened in The Hunger Games; in fact, the beginning of the book sets up how horrible the Hunger Games are. But as soon as Katniss becomes part of the games, it's not horrible anymore. It's a game that she's meant to win, and she plays her part as best as possible. Never mind the fact that she has to kill people to do so. She is never shown suffering any consequences, whether psychological or otherwise, for having killed several people her own age, even though such an event would traumatize most sixteen-year-olds. This is one of my biggest complaints about The Hunger Games: It trivializes murder, and it romanticizes horrible situations. This, I believe, is not a message we should be transmitting to middle school students. And yeah, I know that The Hunger Games is probably not going to turn kids into murdering psychopaths; that's not the point. The point is we shouldn't be teaching kids to read superficially.

Now, I think The Hunger Games could have been a great book. It had a lot of potential, and its use of the celebrity treatment/objective spectatorship theme could have been profound. Instead, The Hunger Games suffers from a genre identity crisis, oscillating from social commentary to action/thriller to romance without being able to integrate all the separate threads. Moreover, because it romanticizes the titular games, it avoids any sort of social commentary that the dystopian genre is usually known for.

And now we come to the "feminism"...or lack thereof. I've often seen The Hunger Games described as having strong feminist values. Unfortunately, this praise doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

In my history class on Victorian England, we were discussing how female stereotypes are often perpetuated by feminists themselves. Along the same lines, I'm starting to think that 21st-century YA fiction that masquerades as "feminist" is really not at all feminist.

But hey, you object, Katniss is an Action Girl! She's responsible for providing for her family, she can use a bow and arrow, and she saves Peeta's life! How is this not feminist?

Much of what I'm going to point out isn't original; it comes from farla's close reading of The Hunger Games. Basically, aside from Katniss, is there any other positive female character? No. Prim needs to be protected. Katniss's mother is weak and useless. Effie is superficial. The female tributes are vicious competitors. Rue is the only one, and she exists in the story solely for the purpose of getting killed off. (In a very convenient fashion.)

Now tally how many positive male characters there are. Katniss's dad is the shining point of her life. Peeta is great. Gale is great. Cinna is amazing. Haymitch is drunk but competent...Do you see where this is going?

More unsettling is the way Katniss and Peeta's relationship is portrayed. It's not Twilight-level unhealthy, but there are some unsettling implications. For example, Katniss, who up until now is an Action Girl, is forced to be a healer (a "feminine" occupation as defined by the book) to Peeta. Also, Katniss often has to wheedle Peeta into doing things by bribing him with kisses and all that, because he doesn't listen to her. This isn't feminism. Not by a long shot. The book's message becomes something along the lines of, "Girls, be awesome, but if you get a boyfriend, remember your role is to make your boyfriend happy!"

So, to sum up: I don't think The Hunger Games should be taught in English classes in the same way that Twilight shouldn't be taught. It's honestly a shallow book, it does nothing new, what it could have done it didn't pull off, and it has quite a few negative messages embedded in the narrative. Plus, it's just not very good writing. I shudder to think of students having to write essays using quotations from The Hunger Games.

The worldbuilding has one fatal flaw.

So in Panem, there's a Capitol surrounded by 12 districts, right? Each district is kept in constant fear of eradication by the Capitol and the example of the destroyed District 13. But, each district is responsible for one economic task--i.e., one district does all the farming, one district does all the fishing, one does all the mining, etc.

Are you seeing the fatal flaw yet?

The Capitol can't afford to destroy any of the districts. If they blow up District 12, they can say goodbye to all their coal. Blow up the farming district, and no more food. Conversely, the people living in these districts should realize they can just go out on strike, paralyze the economy/living standards in the Capitol, and then more or less demand what they want. The Capitol has been keeping its citizens down with terror, but it seems like they don't actually have the manpower to put down a general strike.

Striking power = no more fear of the government = The Hunger Games's world collapses.

A simple solution to a three-book-long conflict.