The Hunger Games and society are similar in how they have hierarchies and the people considered “lower” are treated as disposable. They are only useful to the “higher” people’s benefit.
Fani Cettl talks about the corrupt nature of society throughout the article. Cettl says that, “the exceptional killing of specific 23 youngsters and the victory of one are normalized and localized in the arena in order to preserve through fear the overall oppressive status quo, an order in which indeed everyone is potentially killable” (Cettl 143).
If everyone is expendable and they are reminded frequently, they are coerced into behaving the way the government wants them too.
Fani Cettl mentions how the concentration camps were “first formed under the proclamation of the state of siege, and not the prison or penal law, and then were simply left to exist as a state of normal situation” (Cettl 142).
This relates to The Hunger Games in how the actual games may not have been meant to be this long-lasting and terrible aspect of society, but the snowball effect kept it rolling until it turned into something appalling.
After 74 years of watching children kill other children for sport, the general morale of a society becomes twisted and corrupt.
Cettl also proposes that “the fictional totalitarian nation-state decision to isolate and kill bodies in [a] reality show can be read as an imagined radicalization of the current procedures and narratives in which young bodies are framed by the liberal competitive market” (Cettl 141).
This radicalization could come from child prostitution or any other organization that forces children to do things that they do not want to do. Problems in society today are hidden as much as possible, but using a fictional world that can act as a substitute for real societies can offer the opportunity to grow through the ignorance of these issues.
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