Borrowing for Originality In The Hunger Games

“Every artist is a cannibal - every poet is a thief”- from The Fly by U2

There have been boy wizards before Harry Potter. There have been magical lands of moving trees, elves, dwarfs and dark lords before Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. There have been vampire love stories before The Twilight Series. And there have been dystopian war-game, kill-or-be-killed tales before The Hunger Games. 

But I’m not saying that’s a bad way to write–it’s the only way to write. If you are a human crafting a story for human readers, there is a very small chance you are going to be 100% original. Of course there may be physical elements that are truly unique to your story, but if you have a human, or any being that acts like a human in your story, you are bound to “borrow” something from past writers–whether you’re conscious of it or not. You can’t help it, you’re human, that’s the only perspective from which you can write. To try anything else is anthropomorphism or guessing, and it’s all tainted with humanness. 

I went to see “The Hunger Games” movie and this is good example of “borrowing” for originality. I’ve read reviews of the film and book that mention its similarity to other stories. Here are a few that come to my mind after seeing the film (in order of appearance in the film): 

 Post American Civil War South Reconstruction- After the war, Lincoln wanted to welcome the South back into the Union without retribution. (Sherman saw to a lot of the punishment during the war with his famed “marches”.) But since Abe was assassinated, the Northerners were free to put the smack-down on rebel states after they surrendered  by imposing severe taxes and other demoralizing acts. It makes me wonder how different relations would be today if Abe would have lived. 

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson- Didn’t read it, but it’s popular enough that I’ve heard what it’s about. A village holds a lottery to choose one person to stone to death every year. 

A Vonnegut-like short story of which I forget the name- The premise is very similar. There is peace throughout the world. Because of a previous mega-war that had tragic consequences, they now hold war-games every year (or every 20 years?) They put a number of soldiers from different countries in a huge dome to fight and the country who has the last man alive, wins. The winning man receives anything he wants and has absolute immunity from the law. The story closes with a winner going into someone’s house and raping a young woman while her parents are helpless to do anything about it. 

Red Dawn “Wolverines!”  Communists invade America and a small group of high schoolers rebel and have to survive out in the wilderness. 

The Running Man- A wrongly incarcerated man is put in a kill-or-be-killed game played by convicts for the entertainment of citizens. 

The Truman Show- Watching every move a character makes with cameras fixed in a dome-like environment. 

Survivor, the TV show. People backstab, lie, cheat and betray each other in order to be the last person on the island and win some money. For our entertainment.

Lord of the Flies- Boys land on a desert island after a plane? (or boat?) crash and learn to survive, but eventually form factions that steal, backstab, cheat, betray each other, and fight. A few boys are killed before they are rescued.

And I’m sure there are many more stories and incidents I could put in our literary blender, hit frappe and pour out something similar to “The Hunger Games” (THG), but the thing that makes THG so popular is the way these elements are knit together into a unique story, with unique characters and a unique theme. 

A Few Too Many Words About My Experience Seeing The Movie

It’s a good story, I can’t comment on the writing because I didn’t read the book, but the 

one unique thing about THG is why I never, ever want to see it again. 

Teens killing teens. Adults forcing kids to do adult things, for entertainment. 

I try to tell myself, “it’s the movies, it’s not real.” But to see a good movie or read a good story is to invest in the characters in some way, and if I see a character that is “good” die, I'm sad. I feel an emotion and that emotion is real, whether the death is or isn’t, and even if I discount the emotion soon after it appears. 

To illustrate my point a little sharper, I will recall the confusion and grief felt after any of the recent school shootings. The shootings never make sense when we first hear about them-why would a teen kill their teen classmates? Some time after the incident, we are given a reason for the killer’s rampage, whether it’s psychological instability or because of bullying or obsession with guns or heartbreak. And we try to make that reason make sense. 

Now, take the reason for these school killings-psychological instability, bullying, heart-break-and then, as in THG, replace it with “for entertainment” or even “retribution for a war that happened 74 years ago”.  This is the element that hit me hard. It’s as if the author may have considered writing the story for adults-it could have contained more gore and lewd elements-but it would have been too much like any other war movie of a similar theme and too much like the war on TV of which we see so much that it isn’t shocking anymore. In this movie, the shock value and the slightly unbelievable part for me is that it’s the children who are made to fight each other, kids who are 12-18–before the age of accountability. 

I say that children put in war-games, kill-or-be-killed situations is slightly unbelievable because when you write fiction, whether it be sci-fi, fantasy, children’s cartoons, horror or whatever, you must be as realistic as possible i.e., you must relate to your audience, who are most always human. No matter how unreal your fiction is, if it doesn't follow human reason (or unreason) it seems forced or contrived. 

If this whole hunger games thing is held as retribution for war, why are adolescents sent to play? Why not the age group who usually go to war, and probably fought in the war that led to all this? Why not the adults? It would have to be a very perverse and callous society to force such barbaric games on their young (even in fiction). In the movie, the society, other than wearing waaay too much fluorescent clothes and makeup, didn’t seem to be that out of whack in other areas. (This stealing-the-innocence-of-youth theme seems more at home in a stark, post-apocalyptic setting as in the anarchy of Mad Max.) And though I’ve not read the whole series and I’m being speculative, could the reason be that the story written as YA fiction would pull in a bigger audience? 

I know there are scads of other wholesome, uplifting themes in this movie and I’m sure there are many yet to come. But I left the theatre bewildered. Our heroes won and came away with their lives, but there were 22 innocent kids who didn’t. That’s too lopsided for me. There’s no redemption, but I guess that may come in the later books. That’s the problem with parts of a series made into movies.

A writer was once quoted as saying that he never pushed the human heart down so far that it couldn’t come back up (I don’t remember who said that). For me, this story pushed my heart down low, and it still hasn’t come back up.