Haven't really had an opportunity to do much literature analysis since college, but THG (at least the first one...or at least the first 2/3 of the first one) hit me in a very interesting way and I was determined to figure out why. In the process I learned a lot about life, love, and why I enjoy seeing children die.
Anyway, here's my findings, drastically cut down from the pages of notes I spent weeks creating.
1) Characters/emotional enjoyment
The first thing I realized is that Collins made the main character not only easy to sympathize with, but also to inhabit. first person present definitely helps a lot, as does the way that she's fairly gender neutral. She's also a lot less proactive than, say, Gale, which makes her easier to relate to for people, who, like myself, are lazy. Mostly she reacts to stuff happening - she never sets off to start a revolution. And of course, being stuck in a crapsacked universe (new here, so forgive me if I don't use a lot of trope names, but I do remember that one) makes her relatable to people in a bad mood, and sympathetic in general, especially since she's not overly whiny about it. On top of that, the audience doesn't mind inhabiting her perspective because she's sort of a badass, but at the same time proves that she's got a heart of gold by volunteering.
So, on an emotional level, I think the main character is mostly what draws me in, by being easy to root for and imagine myself in the perspective of. And most of this is established quickly, which helps.
2) Plot/Mental enjoyment
This is getting a little more unique to THG. What THG offers is something fairly (yeah, yeah, battle royale must be mentioned by law) unique - killing off scores of kids, which are usually immortal. Now, violence and bleakness on its own is fine, but that's not what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is that at least some of the kills have to be performed by the main character, who is supposed to be sympathetic. Since child murder is usually only the purview of the bad guys, the story made me curious as to how those conflicting issues would be resolved - how can she make it out of the games while remaining sympathetic? Unfortunately, the author took the easy way out, imo, by painting all the careers she kills as pure evil and never having katniss kill anyone else, but my brain was at least thrilled for a while, wondering how this might play out. For comparison, the success of the rebellion in book 3 was pretty much assured from the beginning, so it was never nearly as interesting.
3) The Secret Ingredient
So the above things are good, but I think there's one other ingredient that stealthily improves the interest the book commands without really requiring a lot of effort, and is actually fairly unique to the hunger games. Namely, the setup of the story tells us almost exactly how the story is going to end. You know that she's going to go into an arena with a bunch of other kids, and one of them is going to come out, barring some sort of unfortunate cheating involving fruit. On top of that, especially because it's first person, you can safely assume that katniss makes it out just fine. You know all this from the beginning of the second chapter. I think this really plays on the interest of the plot - the conflict between "killing kids = bad" and "katniss != bad" and "katniss = killing some damn kids" is made evident early enough that the tension drives the entire story, whereas most stories will have a conflict only distantly visible from the beginning, or fail to have an interesting conflict visible at all. With TGH, from page 15 or so, you're already thinking "damn, this is going to be interesting".
Of course, after the awesome setup the book spends way too long dicking around with boring love triangles and a comedically underwhelming final boss fight in the third act, book 2 ruins everything by letting all the important characters live, and book 3 is just boring. But there's still some very interesting techniques hidden under there, imo.
Anyway, for those who enjoyed (at least elements of) the hunger games, I'm curious if my analysis also holds up for you, or if you think I'm missing some other important elements, or if I'm just dead wrong.
Haven't really had an opportunity to do much literature analysis since college, but THG (at least the first one...or at least the first 2/3 of the first one) hit me in a very interesting way and I was determined to figure out why. In the process I learned a lot about life, love, and why I enjoy seeing children die.
Anyway, here's my findings, drastically cut down from the pages of notes I spent weeks creating.
1) Characters/emotional enjoyment
The first thing I realized is that Collins made the main character not only easy to sympathize with, but also to inhabit. first person present definitely helps a lot, as does the way that she's fairly gender neutral. She's also a lot less proactive than, say, Gale, which makes her easier to relate to for people, who, like myself, are lazy. Mostly she reacts to stuff happening - she never sets off to start a revolution. And of course, being stuck in a crapsacked universe (new here, so forgive me if I don't use a lot of trope names, but I do remember that one) makes her relatable to people in a bad mood, and sympathetic in general, especially since she's not overly whiny about it. On top of that, the audience doesn't mind inhabiting her perspective because she's sort of a badass, but at the same time proves that she's got a heart of gold by volunteering.
So, on an emotional level, I think the main character is mostly what draws me in, by being easy to root for and imagine myself in the perspective of. And most of this is established quickly, which helps.
2) Plot/Mental enjoyment
This is getting a little more unique to THG. What THG offers is something fairly (yeah, yeah, battle royale must be mentioned by law) unique - killing off scores of kids, which are usually immortal. Now, violence and bleakness on its own is fine, but that's not what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is that at least some of the kills have to be performed by the main character, who is supposed to be sympathetic. Since child murder is usually only the purview of the bad guys, the story made me curious as to how those conflicting issues would be resolved - how can she make it out of the games while remaining sympathetic? Unfortunately, the author took the easy way out, imo, by painting all the careers she kills as pure evil and never having katniss kill anyone else, but my brain was at least thrilled for a while, wondering how this might play out. For comparison, the success of the rebellion in book 3 was pretty much assured from the beginning, so it was never nearly as interesting.
3) The Secret Ingredient
So the above things are good, but I think there's one other ingredient that stealthily improves the interest the book commands without really requiring a lot of effort, and is actually fairly unique to the hunger games. Namely, the setup of the story tells us almost exactly how the story is going to end. You know that she's going to go into an arena with a bunch of other kids, and one of them is going to come out, barring some sort of unfortunate cheating involving fruit. On top of that, especially because it's first person, you can safely assume that katniss makes it out just fine. You know all this from the beginning of the second chapter. I think this really plays on the interest of the plot - the conflict between "killing kids = bad" and "katniss != bad" and "katniss = killing some damn kids" is made evident early enough that the tension drives the entire story, whereas most stories will have a conflict only distantly visible from the beginning, or fail to have an interesting conflict visible at all. With TGH, from page 15 or so, you're already thinking "damn, this is going to be interesting".
Of course, after the awesome setup the book spends way too long dicking around with boring love triangles and a comedically underwhelming final boss fight in the third act, book 2 ruins everything by letting all the important characters live, and book 3 is just boring. But there's still some very interesting techniques hidden under there, imo.
Anyway, for those who enjoyed (at least elements of) the hunger games, I'm curious if my analysis also holds up for you, or if you think I'm missing some other important elements, or if I'm just dead wrong.