The Importance of Hunger

The Hunger Games is a very dark and satirical book. It takes a serious look at the morality of power, and how that power can quickly turn those who don't have it against you. The underlying premise of the book is that after the Capitol City put down an insurrection sparked by the 13 colonies, they started up a game where the colonies had to send one boy and one girl to the capitol to fight to the death. However after years of this its fairly natural that another rebellion would start. The capitol abused it's power, after seeing the start of one rebellion they failed to make any changes to avoid another and indeed succeeded in inflaming another more determined rebellion. The power to change and learn from the past lies with those in power but the hubris of the Capitol prevented any change.

The books also deal with morality in life or death situation, is it okay to kill if it's kill or be killed? What would you do in that situation, try to hide, fight on the front lines? This all sort of boils down to man as animal, we hold ourselves above other animals, and as demonstrated in the book we revel in the adrenalin and slaughter. Ideals about love and those we are with are sprinkled here and there, as well as other ideas of survival through the hard times.