Hunger Games Review

Cover of The Hunger Games

Hunger Games, the New York Times bestseller by Suzanne Collins, is a dystopia like none I’ve ever read. Stephen King called it “A violent, jarring, speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense,” – and who am I to disagree with the modern master of horror?

When I first bought Hunger Games, I knew the premise – 24 kids, called tributes, thrown into an arena with one goal: kill each other. I’d heard the sense of awe and love as my students gushed about the book, but I didn’t foresee my own love of it surpassing theirs.

Part 1, titled “The Tributes,” introduces us to Katniss – our sixteen-year-old narrator who spends her days in constant toil against the world she lives in. Her younger sister and widowed mother are incapable of providing food for themselves and rely entirely on Katniss to survive. It is the steadfast,habitual, sacrificial love she’s developed in providing for her family that drives Katniss to volunteer in her sister’s place as the district 12 tribute in this year’s Hunger Games.

In larger-scale, the tone and premise of Hunger Games reminded me of the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” – ever-popular in high school English class curricula. Couple that with the film Gladiator and you’ll have a decent understanding of what you’re in for. Expect disturbing violence and drawn-out suspense. However heart-warming friendship, valor, and romance aren’t completely absent. I shed more than a few tears as characters I loved were murdered, justice breached, and bitter-sweet triumph attained.

Yet, it true dystopian style, the book ends with an eerie sense that whatever small triumphs have occurred, powers like that of the Capitol are not brought down overnight. Surviving the Hunger Games – yep, I just gave away the ending, but since the book is told in 1st-person present tense and this is just the first installment of a trilogy… well, you shouldn’ve guessed that Katniss survives. Surviving the Hunger Games was but a pinch rather than a punch to the gut of injustice. And the hidden activities of the Capitol are more threatening than televised violence ever could be.

 

Stumbling For Control

After work today, the plan was to head to Starbucks and get a nice, 3-pump, non-fat, no-whip white mocha and work on the manuscript, but when I arrived at Starbucks, I encountered the world’s most stressful parking situation. I wasted 10 minutes trying to park before heading away from there to Avenue Coffee where I bought this:

Who could ever ask for more than a hot vanilla latte?

Isn’t it lovely? I probably shoulda started at Avenue, right?

Next time.

This cup of fluffy warmth calmed my soul in delightful, slow, easy sips, and I’m ready to face the world. Makes me want to give up Starbucks altogether except that, well… there’s a Starbucks on every corner and only one Avenue Coffee that I’m aware of.

Anyways, I sat down to work on the manuscript, but instead ended up buying my first ever whole album off of iTunes. I’m pretty jazzed, because I got the Proclaimers, which I think might be an altogether fabulous album to listen to during the Ragnar, although a few of the songs are a bit slow. Perhaps I’ll just repeat 500 Miles a bajillion times since it’s one of my favoritest love songs of all time.

On to serious business, now, though. I’ve been mulling something over for a few days now and I think I’m now ready to talk about it (and when I say talk, I really mean write a blog post about it and converse with the few of you who are motivated enough to write comments)…

For the past few weeks, a friend has been complaining about a man whose shirts are a stumbling block for her. I hadn’t taken notice of the shirts or the way his tattoo peaks out from beneath his sleeve accentuating his biceps, so maybe what I’m about to say is unfair, but I’m going to go out on a limb here…

Maybe it isn’t so much that this man is too attractive to be wearing normal t-shirts (heaven forbid we rebuke women for wearing t-shirts), but more that we all have a penchant for control.

Let me take a step back and start by saying that I get where this girl is coming from. Romans 14:13 tells us not to cause our brothers to stumble, which is one of my favorite verses. It urges us to protect our brothers and to love them. It exhorts us to selflessness. In Christian culture, it’s relatively common to hear people talking about the importance of dressing modestly so as not to cause brothers and sisters to stumble, so she’s using the verse the same way that others use it.

My question: When did Romans 14:13 become the gavel we smack down as judgment on others?

This verse is about taking care of the person next to me. When did we start reading it as a verse about how the person next to me really should be protecting and loving me? There are verses that explain how I ought to deal with my stumbles. Matthew 5:30 for example, says, “If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell,” but Romans 14:13 isn’t about that.  This one is about sticking my neck out for the other guy…

So if Christians aren’t using this verse to love others, then what are they using it for?

Answer: Power!

It might seem like I’ve gone crazy, but I think there’s significant power to be had in telling another Christian that he’s a stumbling block; there’s no legit way to refute such a statement.

Example

Girl: I don’t know if I should tell you this, but your shirt really causes me to stumble because it shows a little too much of your nice biceps.

Guy’s Response Options:

1.  You’re wrong.It really doesn’t cause you to stumble.

2. Too bad.

3. I didn’t realize. I’ll stop wearing it.

First of all, the girl gets to seem humble because she’s admitting to struggling. She’s also indirectly complimented the guy by letting him know that he has smokin’ hot biceps, so he can’t very well insult her by telling her to grow some spiritual maturity and examine her heart.

What does he get? Not much. His only option for not being a jerk is to quit wearing the shirt.

This is a ridiculous bit of power.

She has effectively changed his behavior and probably made him question the heart behind his clothing choices when in reality, it’s a t-shirt!

Do you want him to wear a potato sack? Isn’t that what we’d say if a man claimed that a woman wearing a t-shirt caused him to stumble?

Double standard?

 

Reblog About Phillis Wheatley

Image via Wikipedia

The following appeared on the Desiring God blog and was written by John Piper. It touches my heart as one who also didn’t seek or know redemption, but was rescued nonetheless… and as a writer/reader/English teacher.

Phillis Wheatley was the first black person to publish a book of poetry in English. There is a story behind it.

Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, had to be published in London because the Boston publishers, where she lived as a slave, did not believe a young black woman could have written them. The British publishers required an official “Attestation” from leaders in Boston that the poems were hers.

So on a spring morning in 1771, “a young African girl walked demurely into the courthouse at Boston to undergo an oral examination, the results of which would determine the direction of her life and work. Perhaps she was shocked upon entering the appointed room.

There, gathered in a semicircle, sat eighteen of Boston’s most notable citizens. Among them was John Erving, a prominent Boston merchant; Rev. Charles Chauncey, pastor of the 10th Congregational Church; and John Hancock, who later gained fame for his signature on the Declaration of Independence. At the center of this group would have sat his Excellency, Thomas Hutchinson, governor of the colony, with Andrew Oliver, his lieutenant governor, close by his side.

“Why had this group . . . seen fit to summon this adolescent African woman, scarcely eighteen years old, before it? This group of ‘the most respectable characters in Boston,’ as it would later define itself, had assembled to question closely the African adolescent on the slender sheaf of poems that she claimed to have written by herself.

“. . . The African poet’s responses were more than sufficient to prompt these eighteen august gentlemen to compose, sign, and publish a two paragraph “Attestation,” an open letter “to the Publick” that prefaces Phillis Wheatley’s book, and which reads in part:

We whose Names are under-written, to assure the World, that the POEMS specified in the following Page, were (as we verily believe) written by Phillis, a young Negro Girl, was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa, and has ever since been, and now is under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a family in this town. She has been examined by some of the best judges, and is thought qualified to write them.

So important was this document in securing the publisher for Phillis Wheatley’s poems that it forms the signal element in the prefatory matter printed in the opening pages of her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, which was issued in London in the fall of 1773 because Boston printers remained skeptical about her authorship.”
(The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, New York, 1997, pp. xxxi-xxxii)

Here is one of the poems from that book.

On Being Brought from Africa to America

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
“Their colour is a diabolic die.”
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin’d and join th’ angelic train.

 

Evidence of the Delicate Flower

Nike Girl: So you’re looking for some shoes for running?

Katie: Yeah. I ran the P.F. Chang’s half last month and lost a couple of toenails because of my shoes.

Nike Girl: Okay. Well, we have these (insert ridiculous hard-core sounding name of shoe type) and these (insert less hard-core shoe name that sounds like a winged mystical creature). What’s your size?

Katie: I think I’m going with nines today. Eight-and-a-halves were what I was wearing when I lost the nails.

Nike Girl: Well, go ahead and sit down and I’ll bring you some to try on.

[Nike Girl brings 3 -4 pairs of shoes and Katie starts to try them on - occasionally jogging around the store in them to make sure they feel right. Katie sits down and takes off the last pair.]

Katie: What about those ones?

Nike Girl: The (insert really hard-core shoe name)?

Katie: Those teal and neon green ones.

Nike Girl: Those are for less serious runners.

Katie: What’s the difference?

Nike Girl: The ones you’ve been trying on are meant for people who run thirty miles a week. The (hard-core shoe name) is more casual.

Katie: Can I try them anyways?

Nike Girl: What race are you doing again.

[Nike Girl is trying not to roll her eyes as Katie tries on the more expensive and less-functional shoes.]

Katie: The Ragnar.

Nike Girl: You really want to make sure you have the right shoes for a race like that.

Katie: I know, right? I’ll look completely epic in these!

Nike Girl: Didn’t you say you lost two toenails at your last race?

[Katie doesn't answer, but prances around the store for a bit in the teal/neon green (hard-core shoe name)]

Nike Girl: Why don’t you just try these ones on one more time for me? If you don’t like them, I’ll leave you alone.

Katie: Okay.

[She slides off the pretty, epic, light, attractive, non-functional awesome shoes and puts on the inexpensive normal white ones and immediately feels the wonderful padding and support. She frowns.]

Katie: I should probably get these, huh?

[Nike Girl shrugs].

Katie: Fine. [She sighs.] So much for looking awesome in my jeggings and teal/neon shoes… I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to unattractiveness for the race.

 

In a Contest!

If you feel inclined to read a quick version of the story of my worst Valentine’s Day ever, click here. Yesterday, Brigid Kemmerer (whose blog I’ve really been enjoying) hosted a contest for the best story of a worst Valentine’s Day experience, so I jotted down the one about my date with my dirtbag, and it turns out that I’m a finalist. I’m story #2, but feel free to vote for story #1 because I secretly think it’s worse (and less cliche than my story).