Hunger Games Comparison

Suzanne Collin’s novel The Hunger Games, explores the blurring boundary between private and public life, a process amplified by the entertainment industry, and draws a commentary upon the parallels existing in our society.
The Hunger Games takes place in the futuristic, dystopian nation of Panem, located in the present day U.S. The country consists of a wealthy Capitol, surrounded by twelve poorer districts exploited and ruled by the Capitol.
The class struggle is all too real in Panem, drawing parallels to our Society’s unequal distribution of rewards and opportunity, by way of institutional discrimination and brute force. Katniss Everdeen resides in one of the 12 Districts forming Panem, District 12, a destitute coal mining district. Here, the only options for food are tightly regulated Tesserae, tokens worth a meager year's supply of grain and oil for one person, and equipped with the risk of being selected as a Hunger Games tribute. For

The word panem is Latin for “bread,” and given the similarity of the Hunger Games to the gladiatorial Games of Ancient Rome, it hints at panem et circenses, or “bread and circuses.” Such a phrase refers to the Roman strategy of quelling public discontent by providing the citizenry with plenty of food, and entertainment, the latter being in the form of gladiatorial games. In the novel, these gladiatorial Games are synthesized with reality television to create the Hunger Games. The metaphor itself becomes more nuanced due to the ancient Roman influences on Panem. The result is a metaphor that uses Panem to draw connections between Ancient Rome and the modern United States, and it implies that the modern United States has something like its own panem et circenses strategy in place, with reality television taking on the role of the gladiatorial Games.