Katniss Everdeen, the hero of the original trilogy, faced a nemesis called Coriolanus Snow. Few mainstream contemporary novelists have as much to say about class as Collins, and few can grasp the connection between capitalism and right-wing authoritarianism so sharply. It’s a readable and engaging work that deepens the satirical themes of The Hunger Games with unflinching depictions of war, inequality, and poverty. So did demonstrators against the coup government in Myanmar more recently.Ĭollins has now published a prequel to her original trilogy called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Protesters for democracy in Thailand took up the three-finger salute that symbolizes the fictional rebellion in the series. The iconography of The Hunger Games has also become a fixture in real-world political uprisings. The phrase “Hunger Games” evokes images of poverty, authoritarianism, and the sacrifices demanded of ordinary people to keep the system going. Much like The Matrix and Mad Max, the title itself has become a kind of shorthand for the dystopian characteristics of our own society. The work of Suzanne Collins rapidly became a touchstone for twenty-first-century dystopian fiction. The Hunger Games series was a popular sensation after the release of the first novel in 2008 and the film adaptation that followed four years later. Review of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, 2020).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |