Hunger Games

 It seems I associate this book with a certain time in my life. It comes back to me like a strong sense of smell hitting my olfactory bulb, yet it's my memory instead that has carved out Fall 2012 like a heart in a tree. I recall all the memories coming back to me of where I was, my schedule, and who I was friends with second year into Junior College. I had borrowed this book from a friend in student government, and it was all the rage. 

'The Hunger Games' is what I am referring to, and the students at my school are starting to read it so I'm reading it along with them. I've seen the movie of course when it came out but have forgotten some of the details. 

Upon reading this book again after a little over a decade, I recall what I learned from a spiritual talk I went to recently. One of the ways the evil one gets control, the speaker declared and has influence is through government. Think of Communism, Nazism, etc... These were all purely evil (do those words cancel each other out?). 

With the book, 'The Hunger Games', I realize even more so a corrupt and vicious government only seeking selfish gains, or worse, pure torture for its citizens speaks to this fact and nature of the fallen angel's influence. Of course, it's a work of fiction, but it questions the role of government and what is good entertainment versus entertainment to another's harm or worse, death. 

This book is entertaining, hooking you from the beginning, with a dystopian feel. Written in first person from the main character, Katniss' s perspective, she's also seen as a heroine, a rebel, a nonconformist to the rules of how future North America, now called Panem dictates and rules their citizens with the hunger games. I remember I had a classmate in Math that year who would always say the line from Hunger Games or write it at the end of her emails- 'May the odds be ever in your favor'.

Various things come back to me reading this book again. It's not a classic by any sense of the word, but it's picked to read for the students, and with it for me at least. wrapped up with all the things I've learned and grown all these years in between.