One Story, Three Books - My Problem with The Hunger Games

So, I’ve recently read The Hunger Games. And I don’t just mean the first book, I mean I’ve read the whole trilogy.

For those of you who haven’t yet read The Hunger Games, this might not mean very much at all. Okay, sure, you might be saying, you read the whole trilogy. There are some assumptions you might go ahead and make from this.

First of all there could be something along the lines of, wow, that’s a lot of reading. Those of you who know me, however, might skip right past this because you’ll know that I read really super fast, so it’s irrelevant how much reading it took me to get through all three books (case in point: I read both book 2 and book 3 in the same day).

Anyway, the next, and more important assumption that you might make probably goes something like this: if Nancy has read the whole trilogy, I guess the first book (at the very least) must have been pretty good.

And there’s the rub. This is where we stumble across my problem with The Hunger Games - the first book and the rest of the series included. I’m not about to say that I didn’t enjoy The Hunger Games (the 1st book), because I did. However, enjoyment of the first book was not the reason that I read the second two books. Usually, as a reader, that’s how I roll (read?) - I read the first book in a series, and then I decide if I liked that story and want to continue onto the second, then third, and maybe even the fourth book and more if those books exist. But when it comes to The Hunger Games, I had no choice but to read the next two books. NO CHOICE. You cannot stop at just one.

With certain products - Pringles, for example - I’d count that as a good thing. For novels, this is not a quality that I like. And in this blog post I’m going to tell you all about why I don’t like it.

Imagine for a moment, that you have no plans for the evening, no responsibilities that need tending to. It’s the perfect time for you to curl up with a book. This book can be any genre and it can be by any author. It can be new and shiny, it can be old and falling to pieces, all that stuff is unimportant. What is important is that this is a novel.

You settle down in a comfortable book-reading setting. You open your book and you begin to read. You’ve just hit one of the most important parts of the book: the BEGINNING.

The BEGINNING of a novel is crucial. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on here. This is where you get introduced to most, if not all, of the principal characters of the story. The point-of-view of the story is revealed to you - are we god-like creatures reading third person narration, or are we intruding into a characters soul as we read their deepest thoughts in first person? We get a sense of where and when the story is happening. And of course we start to get an idea of what’s actually going on in this story. Basically, we get a sense of all the conventions of narrative. We even get a good sense of the language that’s being used here: the register, the use of “figures of speech” (to use a figure of speech!), the voice, the tone... the list goes on; this is all stuff that’s revealed to us in the BEGINNING of the novel. There’s some action, some exposition. Most importantly, however it is done, is the fact that it is here, right at the BEGINNING of the novel, that we get drawn into the story and decide whether we can stand to keep reading.

It might be a cool character that interests us. It might be sumptuous descriptions of a setting. It could even be that the set-up for the action keeps us reading - we’ve got to find out what happens next. Personally, I usually find that it’s character that draws me in, but then I do tend to prefer character-driven novels.

The Hunger Games drew me in. I judge its BEGINNING to be highly successful. I like the protagonist, Katniss; I’m fascinated by the post-apocalyptic setting and the way in which it is described so that it seems homely instead of terrifying (my pre-conceptions of post-apocalyptica may have affected this feeling). I felt that the action of the story was the most important part - it’s a plot-driven work rather than a character-driven work - and so what drew me in the most was, naturally, the events that were starting to play out.

Let’s move on. Imagine that you settle deeper into your chair, or your bath or into the grass of the picturesque meadow you’ve chosen for this novel-reading fantasy. You move through the BEGINNING of the novel, and this particular choice has caught your attention. Maybe you’ve found something similar to what I found whilst reading The Hunger Games or maybe it’s something else that’s got you intrigued. Either way, imagine that you decide this book is pretty okay and that you want to keep reading. Before long you’re going to make it to the next part of the novel: the MIDDLE.

There are sooooooo many different theories about what *should* constitute the MIDDLE of a novel. Most people agree that there needs to be some kind of character development and some, you know, actual action. As a general rule there’s usually some conflict. Maybe a minor conflict, or two or three, that gets resolved, and maybe a major conflict that it’s going to take a bit more work to, well, work out.

When it came to reading The Hunger Games, the first book I mean, the middle contained a whole lot of actual action. We had a bit of character development although I did feel that the protagonist maybe didn’t develop as much as she could have. There’s an explanation for that, I think, but it’s something that we’ll have to come to a little later, as I continue on my chronological journey through you imagining to read a novel. Anyway, Hunger Games, heck of a lot of action going on in there. It’s very exciting. I did find it to be a really captivating read, mostly because I was always wanting to know what was going to happen. I read it quite quickly.

Think about your imaginary book. This book is maybe not the best book you’ve ever read (The Hunger Games was good but it certainly doesn’t claim that title for me, and I don’t want to make you think that we’re reading some spectacular work of literature - the imaginary book you’re reading is just your average-Joe novel). The point is, you’re into the MIDDLE of the novel. The plot meanders along, or maybe roller-coasters along - pacing is irrelevant here, as long as it’s holding your attention.

Personally I’ve never seen the MIDDLE of a novel as being quite as important as the BEGINNING. Perhaps that’s because I really enjoy writing the BEGINNINGs of novels. I tend to get stuck at the MIDDLE and give up on the story. Perhaps a good MIDDLE is why The Hunger Games got published, and none of my work ever has. Perhaps that has more to do with the fact that I’ve never tried to get any work published.

Anyway, you read the MIDDLE of your imaginary novel. It’s good. It’s not the best, but it’s good enough to hold your attention, however it manages to do that.

So you read read read read until suddenly there’s only a few pages left. Now I’m going to tax your imagination because I need you to imagine two separate scenarios. Let’s start with the ideal: scenario one.

Scenario one: the conflicts begin to be resolve, relationships are being tied up and the bad guys are starting to get their comeuppance. Yes indeedy, you’ve reach the END. And it feels kinda good. Maybe a little sad - you’re not ready to leave these characters behind, or maybe you feel that the plot has more to reveal. Maybe you’re not ready to drag yourself out of the fictional world you’re reading and plant yourself firmly back into an inevitably disappointing reality. Maybe it’s the opposite - you want to get out of the world of the novel; if the characters were disturbing and the events dark and scary, I don’t blame you. I’d want to rush to the finish too.

But what I always find when I reach the END of a novel, and I’m really hoping you can relate to this feeling, is a sense of fulfilment, contentment and maybe a little relief. I’m happy about it. The bad guys are getting what they deserved, so my sense of outrage and justice to be served is satiated. The good guys are all hooking up or getting married or playing with their pets at the seaside or baking a cake - feel good stuff, you know? Perhaps different genres experience different specifics, but you get the general idea.

Here’s the most important part, for me, at least. When I sat down and opened my book and let myself be drawn in at the BEGINNING, I did it some pre-conceptions and assumptions. Genre expectations, we might call them. I knew that I was reading a novel so I knew what to expect from the BEGINNING - it’s part of what’s helping you to imagine yourself comfortable with your imaginary novel, reading an imaginary BEGINNING. I knew, just as in your imaginary reading situation you also know, that after the BEGINNING we’re going to have a pretty good idea of character and setting, maybe even plot, and that then we’re going to move on to the MIDDLE. And then, because you’ve read novels before so you’ve seen the pattern for yourself and because you went to school and they taught you about the basic structure of novels, you know that the next thing you should be reading is the END. When you get there, your expectations are satisfied, there are no nasty surprises. In the one book you’ve experienced three crucial parts: BEGINNING MIDDLE END.

Let’s rewind a little and take your imagination through scenario two. Remember where we were?

And suddenly you’re a little confused, because it doesn’t seem like there are enough pages left in the novel for them to catch the bad guys. There’s no time for a wedding in the handful of thin sheets left, even if they suddenly change the font size to teeny tiny! None of these conflicts are resolving... uh oh.

That’s right, you have not reached the END. Sure, a few things might be wrapped up.

Let’s take a look at The Hunger Games. ***SPOILER ALERT*** Don’t worry, this is pretty predictable so it’s not a major spoiler, in my opinion, but I thought I ought to warn you.

***SPOILER ALERT***

At the “END” - if you can call it that! - of The Hunger Games (book 1) the Hunger Games that title the novel do come to a close. However, that’s about the only thing that gets wrapped up at the end of this novel. The Games end. Sure. Of course they have to, because this book is called The Hunger Games and the next one is called Catching Fire, so you know it’s about something at least a little bit different. But that’s about the only thing that comes to a conclusion, and even then I didn’t feel that it was a very good one.

***END SPOILERS***

And this, essentially, brings us to the crux of my problem with The Hunger Games. I’m not saying that it’s my only problem with the series; I’m also not saying that it made me entirely dislike the series. My main problem with The Hunger Games is this: the books end, without an END.

This does explain one thing: why did I feel that Katniss could have been developed more as a character? Because she was going to be developed more as a character, and does in fact go through quite a personal developmental journey over the course of all three books. She didn’t have to be fully developed in The Hunger Games because her development was going to continue in the later books.

Anyway, on with my complaint: I find this writing technique - or perhaps more aptly: money-making technique - utterly appalling. Novels have a BEGINNING a MIDDLE and then an END. They have this because it’s a convention of the genre of narrative. They have this because audiences expect it. They have it because, let’s be honest here, it’s actually not that difficult to fit one complete BEGINNING-MIDDLE-END story into one book. The Hunger Games is a series made up of three books. They’re pretty decent sized novels, too. But the print is big, so they’re not as long as they look.

A lot of people think that young adult readers (think: petulant teenagers) won’t read long books. Firstly, even if that’s true, I personally don’t think that it justifies the shameless act of marketing that is splitting a story over three books. Secondly, it’s not true. I mean really, think back to when you were a young adult reader. How many people reading this blog post right now hadn’t read a decent sized novel by the time they were into young adult texts? *crickets chirp* Exactly. I was reading novels before age six. I’m sure many of you experienced similar things, and I’m sure many of you were reading longer and more complex texts before I was. Children, teenagers and adults alike would still have read all three books of The Hunger Games even if the one story had been presented to them in one book.

There’s one pretty clear argument against what I’m saying (or at least, one that I can identify, so feel free to comment with more) and that is cliffhangers. Yes, cliffhangers are a valid narrative technique. We see them most commonly in television, when an episode of our favourite soap opera ends with the resident bad boy having the police raid his home, the cute teenager getting the results of her pregnancy test and the middle-aged woman walking into her bedroom to find her husband in bed with her evil step-sister. I’m not saying that cliffhangers are a bad thing, because they can be used extremely effectively. And they work, especially in the case of those ridiculous soap operas (which you should really stop watching because, come on now, you’re better than that).

Cliffhangers in novels are not something that I have an intrinsic problem with. After all, sometimes a clever cliffhanger is just the thing you need to keep you reading past chapter one and on into chapter two. And when it comes to cliffhangers in between chapters, I am absolutely for totally one hundred per cent okay with them.

When it comes to cliffhangers at the END of novels, I have mixed feelings. I don’t want to come right out and say that they’re a bad thing. They can be used quite cleverly, for one thing. And marketing is an important part of authorship, although I’ve always felt that it should be secondary to actually writing well. I suppose a plus-side is that it does get kids reading more books - they go from reading one book to reading three, even though it’s only one story. There are plus-sides, okay, I admit that. But overall I feel that the END of a novel, or at least the end, where the END should come, is the wrong place to put a cliffhanger.

In particular, I feel that The Hunger Games gave us too much cliffhanging and not enough resolution to tide us over. I read the next book because I felt like I had no choice. Because I felt like the story wasn’t finished (which it wasn’t). But I read on with a certain amount of resentment. I felt trapped by the money-grabbing author. I did not feel like I was reading those second two books out of enjoyment.

In some cases, I don’t mind this force-you-forwards type of cliffhanger. Soap operas, of course, are one place where I expect them. Here’s a more specific situation: I don’t mind so much when there’s a force-you-forwards cliffhanger between part two and three if part one was a stand-alone text. I still don’t really like it, but I’m a little more forgiving. You’ll recognise this sort of situation in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies. After you’ve seen film numero uno, you get an END, and it’s pretty satisfying, in my opinion. At the end of film numero two-oh, you don’t get an END. The story is spread over movies two-oh and three-oh. The END that we expected in two-oh and are deeply craving by the time the third movie comes out, is finally served up at the end of that third movie. It’s not an ideal situation. I’d rather that they’d made three stand-alone films instead of a first film, half a sequel and then the other half of the sequel. But at least you got two stories over three films, instead of The Hunger Games which gave me one story over three novels.

Let’s take a look at marketing. How much do books cost these days? A quick check at the bookstore tells me that they’re mostly around $30. There was a time when books were cheaper but that’s beside the point right now.

Let’s return quickly to our imaginary book. Imagine that it’s the day before you sat down with your novel. You’re at the bookstore. You look at the books and at the prices, and if you’re anything like me you either sigh or wince at the fact that you’re about to shell out $30 for a novel. But you really need something to read. So you choose your novel, through any method you prefer, and you pay your $30 and you take it home. Then you start to read and we’re back to the earlier situation that I had you imagine. BEGINNING? Check. MIDDLE? Check. END? Nuh-uh, not for you. You experience the shock and anger of having your expectations shot right through the brain. You feel furious because you didn’t get that END. Your bank account starts to cry as it realises what’s to come. Yes, you have to traipse back to the bookstore and fork out another $30 for book two.

If you’re reading The Hunger Games, you’re about to pay a total of $90 to read one story. Interestingly, movies cost about $15 for uni students (which most of my readers here are). You could go watch The Hunger Games - all three movies, when all three are finally released - twice each for that kind of money. Or you can take your partner/friend/cat and together you can watch each movie once. Whatever.

The point is, $90 for one story.

That’s great if you own a book store or a publishing company or if you’re Suzanne Collins and collecting royalties from every Hunger Games book that they sell. It’s less great if you’re a starving uni student or a minimum-wage teenager or a parent who just wants his/her kid to read something.

So the reason for my problem clearly stems from a number of places. Firstly, personal outrage because DAMN IT books should END at the end. Secondly, a more academic sort of outrage, because I started reading The Hunger Games with certain expectations of the genre of narrative, and they were thrown right back in my face when I reached the end, but found myself reading nothing that actually constituted an END to the narrative. And thirdly, a somewhat anti-materialism, financial kind of outrage, accompanied with a certain amount of confusion - because if you want kids to read, why are you making them pay $90 to read one story?

And that, in way more words than it really needed to be put, was my problem with The Hunger Games.

All that said, it’s actually a pretty great series and if you can stand between-novel-cliffhangers then I really recommend it.

At the very least, be sure to read it before the movie comes out!

... But perhaps that’s a rant for another time.

♥Nancy♬