Burn With Us, By Susan Shau Ming Tan

Susan Shau Ming Tan’s essay of the Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy titled “Burn with Us” is a psychological analysis of the dystopian novels. She analyzes the dominating characteristics of the capital and how through the Hunger Games they are able to silence the population by destroying the innocence of childhood. She also points out some of the defining characteristics of Katniss Everdeen, considered one of the strongest written female protagonists, and shows how she is able to use the oppressive nature of the hunger games to unite the country into rebellion against the capital. This powerful piece of analysis points out some of the more disturbing points in the world of Panem and enlightens the motivations of Katniss as she struggles to be the girl on fire and the girl who just wants to

(Tan pg.56)” This fascination of the role reversal occurring in this world brings an interesting perceptive to The Capital’s motivations and methods to their dominance. By making the children go through with this horrifying threat of the Hunger Games, they lose all sense of individuality and simply become tools of The Capital. Tan writes that, “The elaborate rituals preceding the Games cement this emphasis on the child, or more specifically, on the child as object. (Tan pg. 60)” There is a bit of irony occurring in this analysis. Tan focuses on the objectification of these children and points out The Capital’s need to make them become symbols for glamourous violence. Yet while we as readers acknowledge how awful it is that these children are forced to become both objects of desire and objects of violence; we are doing the same thing in reality. The fact that The Hunger Games has become such the success that it is, we too fall into this objectification directed for these characters. Many readers of The Hunger Games praise the