When reading The Hunger Games trilogy through the emphases of Post-colonialism, several interesting things emerge. Two things Post-colonialist critics are most interested in appear: the concept of identity (particularly identity in light of oppression) and imperialism. Post-colonialist ideas are seen most clearly through the following four topics: the sins of the Capitol, the voices of the rebellion, the identity of Katniss, and the into-the-beyond conclusion of the series. By these, Collins brings out the need for people to fight back against oppression and totalitarian rule.
Bill Ashcroft, in his book The Empire Writes Back, lays out simply what Post-colonialism is about: “We use the term ‘post-colonial’, however, to cover all the culture affected by the imperial process” (2). The prime-mover of Post-colonial theory is the Empire or the colonizer. The subject, then, is the colonized—the victims of the colonizer. In this series, there is a clear “line drawn between colonizer and colonized, which [is] reinforced by social and spatial segregation” (Lees 135). This form of the colonizer/colonized binary is clearly laid out in The Hunger Games series. Both the social and the special segregation are laid out below.
Suzanne Collins paints a post-apocalyptic nation (Panem) in which one entity (the Capitol) rules over 13 outer colonies (the Districts), each of which produce a certain commodity used by the Capitol. After a rebellion, one of the districts (13) is crushed and the Capitol regains supremacy over the other 12. The Capitol uses various means to suppress the districts and keep them in line, but their primary means (and the subject of the first book) is an annual event called the Hunger Games, wherein 24 children (12-18 years of age) are sent into an arena to fight to the death. Though focused on the Capitol and its character, “Mockingjay moves the narrative into before-unseen areas” (Keeton). It is in the third book that the Capitol emerges the most. The sins of the Capitol come in three forms: historical oppression of the districts through fear and force, objectification of the districts, and misplaced hybridity.
Imperialism arises here in several places: for one, the fact that one entity rules over several others that are not considered a part of it—these outer districts are the colonies of the empire that is the Capitol. Next, the Capitol used force to keep her colonies in line. Images of the ravaged district 13 are seen throughout the series (most prominently in book two and three). Though the other districts have limited exposure (a single image of the destroyed Judicial building), the use of force is clear. The use of fear to control is also a theme in Post-colonialist literature. In this case, the Capitol uses the Hunger Games to keep their people in line. All citizens of Panem are forced to watch their children be slaughtered in a complex and sinister arena (The Hunger Games 18). The use of fear and force by the Capitol clearly marks it as an imperial regime subject to the assaults of Post-colonialist theory.
The next facet of the sins of the Capitol is its objectification of the districts. The Capitol has designated each district according to its task and production: district one produces luxury items; district two produces weapons, arms, stone, and some transportation; district three produces technology; district four is fishing; district five produces power; district six produces transportation; district seven produces lumber; district eight is textiles; district nine is grain; district ten is livestock; district eleven is agriculture; district twelve is coal, and district thirteen was nuclear weapons (“Panem”).
Narashinga Sil explains what is going on above from a Post-colonialist perspective: “Albert Memmi has written in the Dominated Man: Notes Toward a Portrait, the colonial condition ‘chained the colonizer and the colonized into an implacable dependence, moulded their respective characters and dictated their conduct’” (Sil 23). A district’s production was its identity, as seen in the chapters where Katniss is training for the Hunger Games—even after, the residents are identified primarily by their district. This reduction degrades the people and makes them not a person but a number—in this case not just a number but a product. The clear oppression and ethno-centrism displayed by the Capitol in reducing millions of people to merely what they produce is reminiscent of imperialist attitudes and slavery.
The final sin of the Capitol is its hybridity—its multi-faceted (yet narrow) definition of themselves. Typically, the concept of hybridity is seen as a great good—one can be identified by the many different aspects of who they are. Current examples of hybridity would look like this: I am white; I am male; I am American, Californian, from the Bay Area; I am a college student; I am a Christian; I am an Evangelical; I am a writer; I am an English Major; I am a former-actor; I am a friend, and so on. I am defined by any and all of these aspects—but I get to choose which I truly found my identity in. So it is with those in the Capitol.
According to the treatment of the citizens of the Capitol and the places in which they choose to anchor themselves, Collins attacks the idea of rooting one’s identity in pleasure. She does this by her descriptions of their physical bodies. At one point, Katniss describes three specific people as “a trio of oddly colored birds” (The Hunger Games 62). Katniss, in the same situation said “they’re so unlike people” (62). This is an early incident. As Katniss’ disgust with the people of the Captiol grows, her inner commentary against them become more insidious. Another point where she stresses the destructive nature of the obsession with pleasure is during the banquet in Catching Fire, Katniss is offered a drink that will make her not hungry anymore (79). However, when she realizes what the drink will do, she is disgusted. This, and the scenes describing the gross mutilation of their bodies, comes together with a final facet of pleasure-breeding-destruction to cement Collins’ stance. The fact of the Hunger Games themselves point to a desensitizing obsession with pleasure. The citizens of the Capitol (largely) not only watch the Hunger Games with the rest of the known world—they enjoy it. Collins’ point here is two-fold. On the one hand, she is speaking against violence in the lives of children, and on the other hand, she is making a comment on the desensitization of Americans.
Hybridity, then, is not a purely positive thing. Here, Collins’ shows a group of people who have anchored themselves in the wrong things. By this, Collins’ does not make war against hybridity, but makes war against some tendencies in American society to find themselves in places not worthy of their identity. This criticism is merely best understood through the lens of hybridity.
Post-colonialist criticism of the general colonizer lines up with Collins’ Capitol. It is simultaneously oppressive and self-serving while indulging in a pleasure-saturated environment that many bitter Post-colonialists might identify with the concept of the colonizer. Edward Said, in a general discussion of resistance of the colonized, says: “there was always some form of active resistance, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the resistance finally won out” (xii, emphasis in text). Said also lays out the different kinds of resistance: armed, cultural, political, and national, to name a few. Here, Collins creates more specific forms of resistance by the people of Panem against the Capitol, but each form falls into one of the kinds laid out by Said. The way in which the Capitol uses the districts and objectifies its people relates to one of the primary drives of Post-colonialism: identity, specifically, identity out from under the oppression of the colonizer.
The mode by which the colonized escape the strangling of the colonizer is by finding a voice. In Post-colonialist literature, this first discovery of voice emerges as a primary theme—the oppressed people are at last speaking with their own tongues, rather than being oppressed and suppressed. This cultural victory is the first step on the road to rediscovering one’s identity, which is the chief end of Post-colonialism. In The Hunger Games, it is the first step on the road to revolution. The concept of voice appears frequently in the book series. In each case, the oppressed is finally finding his/her voice and speaking out with politic-shattering impact. Four instances come to mind: Rue, the berries, the paintings, and the confession.
The first instance of voice happens when Katniss unknowingly fights back against the objectification of the tributes. During the games, when a tribute dies the body is taken up into the hovercraft—there is no burial, no sign of respect for the dead. When Katniss’ friend Rue is dying, she sings to her as she passes away (The Hunger Games 235-235). When Rue is gone, Katniss dresses up her body with flowers as a way to honor her (236-237). Rue, here, is given back her humanity, though she is dead. Here, the oppressed of Panem find a voice in the burial of one girl—a voice that cries out that they are human.
The second occurs at the end of the first book, when Katniss and Peeta are in the arena. During the games, the gamemakers amended a rule: “Under the new rule, both tributes from the same district will be declared winners if they are the last two alive” (244). Then, when Katniss has killed the final contestant (leaving her and Peeta), the rule is lifted, but neither one is willing to kill the other (342). Katniss hatches an idea: earlier in the games, Peeta had mistakenly picked Nightlock berries to eat (318). They had saved these deadly berries in case they might be useful, and here, they became useful. Both took a handful of berries and threatened to kill themselves, leaving the Capitol without a victor (344-345). In this scene, the oppressed find a voice. All the people of all the districts find a voice in this singular act of both Katniss and Peeta.
The third instance of voice appears in Catching Fire. In order to combat nightmarish manifestations of the Hunger Games in his dreams, Peeta paints them. Later on, he uses his ability as a painter to incite the gamemakers (Catching Fire 240). Here, a man oppressed by the Capitol and by hellish experiences finds his voice—finds release. In her text, Sil quotes Homi Bhabha as saying: “re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make sense of the trauma of the present” (qtd. in Sil 23). When Peeta paints his nightmares, he defragments his memories and processes reality by piecing it back together. This re-membering is his way of coping with the damage done to him by the colonizer. This re-membering helps him find his voice. The effects of his discovery of voice are not as politic-shattering as the preceding example or the following one, but this break from the rule of the colonizer is critical to the process of rediscovering one’s identity. Peeta is, in a sense, able to process the horrors and keep the Capitol from ruling him through them. First the rule was broken; now the person emerges.
The final discovery of voice occurs when Finnick begins to reveal his objectification to Katniss (Mockingjay 170). Initially, he exists in a state called “‘departenance,’ a refusal to define one’s identity, not because it is ‘lost’ between two continents, but because it is inexpressible within the context of the existing discourses that weave a net of contradictions” (qtd. in Sharpe 398). His knowledge and the lust of the Capitol trap Finnick. In the context of the Capitol, he cannot reveal who he is or what has been done to him. His identity is “inexpressible within [his] context” (398).
His voice emerges as he re-establishes his identity, lays hold of who he is, and finds a method of expressing the formerly inexpressible. Having completed this process, he comes forward: revealing not just the abuse of the Capitol, but the secrets of her people as well. The discovery of Finnick’s voice allows him to throw off the shackles of his past, move forward into who he is, and erode the reign of the colonizer. District 13 uses his story as propaganda against the Capitol, unraveling any unity in the social upper-class (Mockingjay 171-172).
Finnick and Post-colonialist focus share these three milestones, though they are, in some cases, different. In Sil’s article, she quotes Leela Gandhi as saying: “a disciplinary project devoted to the task of revisiting, remembering and, crucially, interrogating the colonial past” (qtd. in Sil 23). Finnick’s passage embodies this concept, although not perfectly. He does not necessarily revisit his past, but he does bring it to light. Following this he does not remember, but interrogates, and in this interrogation, he is moved to relieving action.
A narrative discussion of voice in the texts emerges overwhelmingly. This focus from the Post-colonialist view is not an abuse of the text by the theory (or this applicant). Collins’ clearly uses the topic of voice throughout the novels. But there is one more example that cements her intentionality: Avoxes. The word, dissected, means exactly what one might suspect. When the Capitol punishes some people (whether for violation of law or knowledge of secrets), they cut out the tongues of the accused. The idea of tearing out the tongue of someone with dangerous knowledge parallels the oppression of the colonized by the colonizer. The suppression of their voice, however, is not an effective method of killing that person’s identity. Katniss encounters several Avoxes who she still knows for who they are—even if the Capitol has stripped them of their identity. Collins’ shows the evils of the Capitol not only by the deed, but by the antithesis of the deed. When initially Katniss encounters these people, she remembers who they are and treats them as human beings. Voice, while taken, is not lost.
The penultimate marker of Post-colonialism on these texts, a second-to-last thread that carries through, is the complicated identity of Katniss. Barry writes: “This emphasis on identity as doubled, or hybrid, or unstable, is a…characteristic of the post-colonial approach” (196). Katniss’ identity is doubled in the sense that there is her own identity and the identity forced upon her. Throughout the texts, she changes, making her identity fluid as well. This focus on identity is a key of Post-colonialism, and identity in light of Post-colonialist ideas comes across in unique ways in the series. Katniss is colonized by her objectification and the denial of her subject position and by the sculpting of her identity by both the Capitol and 13, but her identity is larger than this colonization. Her reaction to the Games mirrors that of many colonized people, and she further fits into the Post-colonial ideal in her unhomeliness and in her liminality.
The Capitol colonizes Katniss through objectification and denial of her subject position. This, ironically, is far from the truth—at first. While the Capitol objectifies her, the text clearly reveals that she is not objectified: she remains Katniss in her multi-faceted identity early on. However, as she takes her sister’s place in the Games themselves, the Capitol begins to truly colonize her. The presence of power is the driving force that colonizes her. District 12’s Peacekeepers (the law) do not enforce the laws strongly—they even support the illegal hunting of Gale and Katniss. Here, less power allows for Katniss’ identity. Initially, she was free (more or less) at home in District 12. However, when the Games begin, she is forced into a new role according to the amount of power and force asserted over her.
This sculpting of her character—pressing her into the mold of a tribute—is when the colonization of Katniss truly begins. It is here that she begins to lose her voice, but since the story is told from her perspective, aspects of her identity shine through. At every turn, Katniss emerges to pushes back against the confines of her mold until at last she breaks it and gains her voice with that handful of Nightlock. They do oppress her, but she is not just clay.
The next incident of sculpting has a different reaction, though the end goal is the same. When Katniss is rescued from the arena, they take her to District 13 where she is expected to become their savior—the figurehead that will carry them through revolution and victory over the Capitol. But Katniss’ initial purpose of saving her sister has been completed, and the last thing she wants to do is fight. Still, 13 forces her. Not only this, but she complies—she becomes the Mockingjay. Here, District 13 pushes down her identity as someone who desires peace. This oppression, while serving the good purpose of revolution, is still oppression. It is still sculpting her identity—colonizing her.
Katniss embodies the Post-colonialist subject further in her response to the Hunger Games. Peeta’s reaction (discussed above with the discovery of his voice) and Katniss’ reaction to the Hunger Games illuminates a common problem among the colonized. As opposed to Peeta, Katniss responds by suppressing her memory—trying to pretend that it did not happen. This is what Narasingha Sil calls “postcolonial amnesia” (23). In her article, “Postcolonialism and Postcoloniality: A Premortem Prognosis”, Narasingha P. Sil points out that “willful postcolonial amnesia springs from an urge for historical self-invention by way of eliding painful and shameful memories of colonial subordination” (23). Katniss’ hope fits right into this mold. She wants to forget. She wants to re-invent herself and erase the past, but she realizes that such a repression takes effort and time—neither of which she has, since she is sucked into the next Hunger Games shortly after the Victory Tour of the first.
Katniss demonstrates the concept of unhomeliness at almost any point throughout the series. Homi Bhabha describes unhomeliness as an “estranging sense of the relocation of the home and the world…in [this] displacement, the borders between home and world become confused; and, uncannily, the private and the public become part of each other” (Bhabha 772). This term describes a feeling of not belonging and yet belonging. While there are many incidents (ex: the Capitol Banquet in Catching Fire), the most acute expressions of unhomeliness appear in her attitude toward having children, in the blending of private and public in her love-life, and in her excursions into the wild.
Katniss demonstrates this concept of unhomeliness early on in the first book. Here, the term may not fit perfectly, but it still belongs. When Gale and Katniss are having lunch on the day of the reaping, he suggests they could leave Panem—run for it (The Hunger Games 9). But the realization that they have children to feed and take care of forces the scenario into fantasy. After a brief explaining paragraph, Katniss says: “I never want to have kids” (9). Having children is something that they would only do in a place where they feel safe and secure—at home. In her refusal to ever have kids, Katniss expresses her sense of not belonging to the world she lives in, even though she technically does.
In the end of Mockingjay, this topic comes up again. Only this time, Katniss has overcome her fear of bringing children into the world. Collins gives the reader a sense that she is still not fully comfortable, still not fully recovered or at home, and yet she has two children. Her thoughts in this last section are about how to tell them about everything that has happened (Mockingjay 389-390). Here, she makes unhomeliness manifest in its ending stages. She steps out from the place where she was. She begins to undo the damage of the colonizer on the colonized and begins to learn how to live through it—to gain, in a sense, her own voice.
Collins further demonstrates unhomeliness in the blending of Katniss’ love life with the private and the public. She does this in two ways: she has a private love, Gale, which exists before the Games, and she has a public love, Peeta, which appears during the Games. Not only this, but while Katniss falls in love with Peeta and discovers her love for Gale, the public eye (since she is a tribute and later a victor) focuses on the love-story between Katniss and Peeta. This is something that both Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch use to curry the favor of the public. Toward the end of the Games, Katniss thinks: “The star-crossed lovers…Peeta must have been playing up that angle all along…our ‘romance’ must be so popular with the audience that condemning it would be jeopardizing the success of the Games” (247). This is but one example of a strong theme throughout all three books. This facet of unhomeliness disrupts Katniss’ life and makes it difficult for her to figure out exactly what is going on in her head and heart. The blending of the public and private is a focus of Post-colonialist theory clearly laid out here.
Katniss’ excursions into the wild provide a negative image of unhomeliness for the texts. From the beginning, Katniss finds solitude in the forest. Early on, Katniss makes clear her father’s role in her love of the forest: her father taught her how to hunt and gather food, her father made her bow, and it is her father’s jacket she wears when she goes hunting (5). This represents one thing in a Post-colonialist reading: home. Her father was a symbol of comfort and security. With him, she was at home. When he died, her life fell apart around her. This is where unhomeliness shows itself: with the negative imprint of her father and with the fact that when he goes, her home vanishes. And yet, her father, in a sense, still exists in the woods—the woods remain a place of safety, security, and comfort. They become home.
This is again displayed in Mockingjay, when Katniss receives permission from the controlling District 13 to go off into the woods in order to hunt: “We hunt, like in the old days. Silent, needing no words to communicate, because here in the woods we move as two parts of one being” (53). Though it is a brief example, the point remains: they are released into the woods and it is here in the hunt that Katniss is truly at home. This is another negative image of unhomeliness—not the thing itself but its opposite. When Katniss calls a place home, she implies that there is a place she does not consider home. Throughout the course of the series, Katniss primarily inhabits the spaces where she is not at home, thus establishing her unhomeliness.
Liminality is defined by Homi Bhabha as “in-between the designations of identity” which he equates with the image of a stairwell (Bhabha 767). In her article about living loss, Angela Kelly writes: “In this article I have sought to systematically link the emotion impact multiple deaths and dying, the cultural effects of living in an epidemic, and the available socio-cultural forces for the speaking and living of loss and grief” (Kelly 347). Katniss’ liminality echoes this cause. Her life is surrounded by death, from beginning to end. When Collins’ begins the story, Katniss’ father is dead. The fear of her sister’s death drives Katniss to volunteer in order to take her place (The Hunger Games 22). During the Games themselves 22 other children die. The list goes on.
This, as Kelly explores and discovers, throws the subject (Katniss in this case) into an in-between state where she is always living with this loss and living with the perpetual reality of potential loss. Her situation lines up with Kelly’s description of those with AIDS dementia: “At best, there was a sense of living with the threat that things might be lost or destroyed and that the effort needed to recover them might not be available either now or in the future” (348). Katniss’ unstable reality defines her liminality. She cannot be at the other end of the metaphorical stair because her reality carries with it the looming threat of death. Katniss’ experience, however, differs slightly from the subjects of Kelly’s work: “living loss has contributed to an understanding of liminality as a permanent social space rather than simply an in-between non-permanent space” (347). For Katniss, this space is not permanent, since the series comes to a close, but for the duration of the time where she is in the grip of the colonizer (Capitol and 13), she exhibits this kind of liminality.
One element of Post-colonialism remains. Collins demonstrates the concept of beyond in her resolution of the series. Homi Bhabha defines beyond as “inhabit[ing] an intervening space…to be part of a revisionary time, a return to the present to redescribe our cultural contemporaneity; to reinscribe our human, historic commonality; to touch the future on its hither side” (Bhabha 770, emphasis in text). Most of The Hunger Games series inhabits the space before the beyond. A totalitarian colonizer oppresses twelve districts of people. However, the story itself is of its overthrow. In the end, when the rebellion defeats the Capitol and President Coin of District 13 steps in to take power, Katniss realizes that they will not move from colonizer to this beyond space, but will move from colonizer to colonizer, so she kills Coin (Mockingjay 361, 372). By this, Katniss opens up Panem to the opportunity for entering into this beyond space. The colonized can now escape out from under the totalitarian thumb of the colonizer. Or, as Lisa Nalbone puts it when discussing a similar topic: “The barbaric thus overcomes the civilized through injustice that roots itself in political exploitation” (25). It precisely because of the injustice in the Capitol that the rebellion is allowed to rise. Totalitarian rule breeds revolution.
Collins describes how they begin “to be a part of a revisionary time” (Bhabha 770). First, they initiate democratic rule (her political bent is made clear through the text, but that is the subject of another essay) and they begin to rebuild (Mockingjay 378). The series leaves its readers looking out into this beyond space, wondering how exactly the world and Katniss will recover from the damage the Capitol dealt to their people. The beyond then, is not made manifest in the texts necessarily, but a Post-colonial reading of the text would point to it as the next step for Panem.
A Post-colonialist reading of these texts produces some clear distinctions and points. Such a reading would inspire its readers to the greater ideals the Post-colonialism embodies, but the question of authorial intent remains. In an interview with James Blasingame, Collins says, “I am fearful that today people see so many reality shows and dramas that when real news is on, its impact is completely lost on them.” One of her intentions, according to this interview was not a political or social commentary, nor a discourse about the need to find a voice from oppression, nor the need for a sacrificial savior to bring a people out from slavery and into freedom—it was to open people’s eyes to the reality of desensitization of American society. However, the interview happened prior to the second two novels, and Collins’ intentions likely expanded from this initial noble cause. When conducting a Post-colonialist reading, then, these themes still emerge from the series and can still be credited as valid.
While it may not have been her intention to write a text that Post-colonialist theories interpret so well, the major themes of Post-colonialism seem to be major themes within Collins’ series as well. Ashcroft, when describing Post-colonial literary works, says that since “they emerged…out of the experience of colonization and asserted themselves by foregrounding the tension with the imperial power, and by emphasizing their differences from the assumptions of the imperial centre…[they are] distinctly post-colonial” (2). The story in this text connects with each of these points, allowing it to fall into a similar place. The two themes of totalitarianism and all its evils and voice rise above the backdrop, but the primary focus of identity shows up prominently at every turn. Her topic and her premise nearly demand Postcolonial themes (though most fields of theory would enjoy interpreting these texts and discovering new meanings). The Capitol and the Districts embody the colonizer/colonized concept with near perfection, and her discourse on voice is subtle yet present and powerful. Katniss, as a character, is a paragon among Post-colonialists in many senses—though here, in The Hunger Games, many heroes of equal validity emerge.
Works Cited
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Blasingame, James. Interview with Suzanne Collins. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.8. (2009): 726-727. Print.
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Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2009. Print.
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Nalbone, Lisa. “Colonized and Colonizer Disjunction: Power and Truth in Zeno Gandía’s la Charca.” Hispanofila, 0.159. (2010): 23-37. Print.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. Random House Digital, Inc.1993. Print.
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Sharpe, Matthew D. “Maghrebi Migrants and Writers: Liminality, Transgression and the Transferal of Identity.” Dialectical Anthropology 29.3/4. (2005): 397–421. Print.
“Panem.” Thehungergames.wikia.com. Wikia [Entertainment]. n.d. Web. 2 May 2012.
S. A. Grove 