Hunger Games: The Most Important Life Lessons Learned

Have you ever done something to someone that not only affected that person, but also affected yourself? That, even if you do not realize, is a major life lesson that comes into play many times even in just one day. An average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day, with most of those decisions affecting another person. In reality though, the decisions that affect other people will also come back around to affect yourself. That lesson is “what you do to other people, you also do to yourself” and it is a very important lesson to learn. That is why you have to think before you speak or act, learn from your mistakes, and have the capability of changing based off of those mistakes in order to learn and apprehend this vital lesson.

Learning to think

Doing that will help you understand that what you do to other people, you also do to yourself. In the book Hunger Games, the two tributes from District 12 that have to survive the Hunger Games are Katniss and Peeta. Peeta pretends to be friends with Katniss, but during the Games, turns against her and joins the Careers, the gang of tributes no one likes who have trained their whole life for the Games. Just when Katniss starts really believing Peeta is a traitor, he saves her and shows that he has not changed totally, “‘What are you still doing here?’ he hisses at me. I stare uncomprehendingly as a trickle of water drips off a sting under his ear. His whole body starts sparkling as if he's been dipped in dew. ‘Are you mad?’ He's prodding me with the shaft of the spear now. ‘Get up! Get up!’ I rise, but he’s still pushing at me. What? What is going on? He shoves me away from him hard. ‘Run!’ he screams. ‘Run!’... Sick and disoriented, I'm able to form only one thought: Peeta Mellark just saved my life.” (Collins, p.193) Peeta first went against Katniss and betrayed her trust, but suddenly, when Katniss thought he was with the Careers, had the chance to kill her, but instead, saved her. He realized it was a mistake to turn on someone he could trust, and he changed after learning that mistake. Even though he is not fully on Katniss’ side now, by the rule of what you do to other people, you also do to yourself, he might end up saving himself by saving Katniss because now he has a half-ally. It is important to follow what Peeta did and not only learn from your mistakes, but change from them to make things right. By doing this and making things right for another person, you will also be making things right for yourself. Another person who made a mistake but learned and changed from the consequences of it was Cole from the book