Thursday, April 26, 2012

Hunger Games

The Hunger Games offer a vision of a future where people have become little more than slaves to a totalitarian regime. Most of the population of the country of Panem has been stunted to a subsistence living standard under the surveillance of the Capital’s peacekeepers. They are confined and fenced off into districts. Each district produces specific products for the Capital. The people who live in the Capital live in luxury, able to fulfill any hedonistic desire. The President makes sure they are entertained and also kept in line by the Hunger Games.

 The Hunger Games came about after the Capital put down a rebellion in one of the districts, totally destroying it as an example to the others. For the entertainment of the Capital’s citizens and to remind the districts of its power over them; every child from 12 to 18 must put their names in to be chosen as tributes. Every year a boy and a girl from each district are chosen. They are put into a cleverly designed arena where they struggle to survive and kill off the other tributes.

It’s written in the first person narrative of the main character 16 year old Katniss Everdeen. It took me a few chapters to get into it, after it got to the point of Katniss getting ready for the game it was a real page-turner.

Susanne Collins (I read somewhere) was inspired to write these novels by the Iraq war and reality shows like Survivor. What struck me most about it was this is just the kind of society you would expect if everyone turned away from God. Through out history there have been societies like this and they still exist today where the ruling elite exert their power.

The good thing I see in the popularity of these novels is it may make young people more aware of the danger of an all-powerful government. There are real world initiatives to control human populations and to cordon them off into sustainable developments. The United Nations Agenda 21 is being implemented as you are reading this:    http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_agenda_21_coming_to_a_neigh.html

I hope these novels inspire young people to get politically active and to want to claim back our founder’s vision of liberty and freedom and self-reliance. Maybe they will see and understand how government control of an economy reduces everyone to poverty.

America was unique in that it was founded on the principal that human beings get their rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from our Creator. Somewhere in one of the books I think Katniss asks Gale something like ‘what kind of government do the rebels want? He answers, ‘a republic, along time ago this country was a republic.’ There is no more explanation after that.

Nowhere in the books is there a mention of God or prayer or with all the deaths, any reference to an afterlife. All their hopes and courage comes from the love of family and relationships. In the first book Katniss takes her little sister’s place as a tribute and it’s her love for her little sister that gives her courage. In the end there is still little hope in a better future no real escape from the nightmares of the past. A just society cannot exist without faith in God. Human beings left to their own devices will always seek to serve themselves and dominate others.  The Roman Empire put on elaborate games at great expense to entertain the ruling elite. It was during that time in history that the King of  Kings began to reign and the rock that smashed the idol in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream Daniel 2:35 began to grow and it will grow into a mountain that will fill the whole earth!

Unlike Katniss and her friends we really can hope for a just and righteous future and we can use our God given abilities to free people with the truth, Jesus is Lord!            

1 comment:

  1. Selfless love is often portrayed in this novel but so are selfish and fake versions thereof. Because the Love of God is in the world, real love can be passed down and around. Some of it can be found in the Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins shows us multifaceted characters with whom you can empathize and weaves a fine plot.

    When you read it, think of America and what it was and is...Collin's dystopian Panem alludes to both ancient Rome and modern-day America. How many original colonies were there again? Yep, thirteen! The bravery and tenacity of Katniss should remind us of that same attitude in the persons of Patrick Henry and Paul Revers!

    Fallible men like Washington and Jefferson and Franklin and Adams knew that the natural selfishness of mankind would always produce tyranny and so they put in the midnight oil coming up with a nation based on Biblical principles. The Constitution was written to specifically avoid having a national, official church but rather to encourage all churches to exist and grow. The Founders believed that free men and women could build better lives and produce a better society than the one they left behind in Europe, particularly in England.

    We call the written pearls of wisdom culled from the Bible and law scholars from Europe our Constitution. It was derived from the Bible.

    Sadly, England and Western Europe sent us poison in place of pearls a few decades later in the form of Darwinism and Eugenics and Marxism. In this book, you hear the echoes of the cries of imprisoned, abandoned, tortured victims of the 20th Century wars between freedom and tyranny, between capitalism and socialism/communism, between Christianity and humanism from the screams of various citizens being harmed and killed in the various Districts of the trilogy's story.

    There as so many elitist, socialist, out-of-touch politicians with their hands on the ship of state and the gall to spend your great-grandchildren's money on stupid projects and wild spending in an attempt to be re-elected and pay back their backers...you should think on that for a minute. Could the USA become Panem? Well, ask yourself what happened to Russia when the Reds versus Whites turned into the Party and the slaves? What happened when Mao decided political opponents would make excellent fertilzer? What kind of lives do people in North Korea live right now? Might be worse than the District 12 folks had it?

    So when you vote this November, are you sure you want to send more Capitol-types back to Washington? Me, I would rather have a Katniss or a Peeta than stay with the President Snows!!!

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