The recent release of the first movie based on the Hunger Games trilogy has renewed attention to the wildly popular franchise from author Suzanne Collins. From a Christian perspective, one of the striking things about the film and the book series is the absence of explicit religion or references to God. As Jeffrey Weiss has observed, “The word ‘god’ does not so much as appear in any of the books. Nobody even says ‘oh my gosh.’ There’s no ritual that isn’t totally grounded in some materialistic purpose. Not a hint of serious superstition. Unless I missed it, there’s not a remotely idiomatic reference to the supernatural.”
Weiss’ analysis about the lack of religiosity is borne out by examining the Hunger Games through the lens of hope. Hope is a rich theological concept that has been the basis for deep reflection and significant experience throughout the history of the church. Thomas Aquinas identified hope as one of the three “theological” virtues, inspired by the apostle Paul’s declaration that “these three remain: faith, hope and love.” If there’s little faith in a religious sense in the Hunger Games, we might also ask if there’s any hope.
Even in a land without any conception of a deity, there is an undercurrent of hope throughout the story. The dynamic of hope and hopelessness makes its first and perhaps most significant appearance in Katniss’ recollection of her interaction with Peeta, the “boy with the bread.” Katniss, who has become responsible for providing for her family after her father’s death and her mother’s withdrawal from the world, has reached the end of her resources. Katniss wanders around scavenging for food. “I couldn’t go home,” she recalls. “Because at home was my mother with her dead eyes and my little sister, with her hollow cheeks and cracked lips. I couldn’t walk into that room with the smoky fire from the damp branches I had scavenged at the edge of the woods after the coal had run out, my hands empty of any hope.” In the world of Panem’s District 12, bread means hope. Food represents hope for freedom from hunger, if only for a little while. When Peeta sees Katniss and her suffering, he takes mercy on her. He intentionally burns some bread from his parents’ bakery and throws the bread to Katniss, who is huddled outside in the rain. As Katniss reflects, “just throwing me the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely resulted in a beating if discovered.”
In Peeta’s act of mercy we have a concrete expression of love, which results in hope. Later on, as Katniss thinks about the meaning of this interaction with Peeta, she says, “To this day, I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope.” She continues to another memory, reflecting on a flower, “the dandelion that reminded me that I was not doomed.”
In the film version, there’s a meaningful scene between President Snow, the oppressor in chief of the regime of elites running the Capitol, and the lead Gamemaker. Snow asks the Gamemaker why he thinks there is a winner. Snow’s answer? Hope. “It is the only thing stronger than fear,” he says. “A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained.” For the elites of Panem, hope is used as a method of control.
One of the key dynamics of the Hunger Game trilogy, then, is what happens in a world where all hope seems to be lost. Through small acts of kindness hope can be sparked, and a spark can turn into a blaze, a “girl on fire.” In this way Katniss comes to embody the hope of a better world, a liberated Panem. As Julie Clawson, author of The Hunger Games and the Gospel, writes, “The Hunger Games is a story about hope. What begins as a hope to merely survive turns into hope that a better world is possible.”
The only hope that the residents of Panem have is in themselves. The best they can hope for is that perhaps someone might repay a good deed with one in return. As readers of the novel or viewers of the film, we also want to find hope in whatever situation we encounter, real or fictional. We see flashes of goodness in people and the order in creation and believe that better things are possible. How does this hope persist in Panem or in our world? Why does the idea of hope resonate with us to such a great degree?
The theologian J. I. Packer draws an important distinction between what might be called secular hope, or “optimism,” and Christian hope. He writes, “Optimism is a wish without warrant; Christian hope is a certainty, guaranteed by God himself. Optimism reflects ignorance as to whether good things will ever actually come. Christian hope expresses knowledge that every day of his life, and every moment beyond it, the believer can say with truth, on the basis of God’s own commitment, that the best is yet to come.”
In this sense we might say that the “hope” contained in the Hunger Games is really a form of worldly or secular optimism. The ending of the first book, and even the trilogy, leaves the reality of a better world ambiguous. When Katniss and Peeta survive the games and return to their home, they still don’t know what will await them next, in their district or in their relationship. Their ordeal hasn’t seemed to bring about any real changes for those who live in Panem. In a world where all they have is hope in themselves, Katniss and Peeta remain uncertain and confused. Do they have any real hope for the future?
Christians, however, have reason for hope as we see God’s faithfulness on a daily basis. Even in times of trouble, because we have seen it with our own eyes so many times, we know that all things will come together for good for those who love the Lord. Our hope provides a motivating force for our daily work, whether we write or mine coal, grow grain or nurse people back to health. We are confident that whatever we do in God’s Kingdom can have eternal significance, that it might be part of the “wealth of the nations” that will be brought into the new heavens and the new earth when the Lord returns.
The Christian’s hope is not based on calculations about the effectiveness of worldly reform or of our own ingenuity, however. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, the Christian’s eternal hope in the resurrection and the new heavens and new earth orient us toward risk and responsibility in this life. “The Christian’s field of activity is the world. It is here that Christians are to become engaged, are to work and be active, here that they are to do the will of God,” he writes. “And for that reason, Christians are not resigned pessimists, but are those who while admittedly not expecting much from the world are for that very reason already joyous and cheerful in the world, for that world is the seedbed of eternity.”
Jordan J. Ballor is a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty and a visiting professor of business and social ethics at Kuyper College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Todd Steen is Granger Professor of Economics at Hope College in Holland, Mich.
RESOURCES
Jordan J. Ballor, “Secular Scapegoats and ‘The Hunger Games’” (Acton Commentary)
Rev. Robert A. Barron, “The Hunger Games: A Prophecy?” (NRO)
Julie Clawson, “Dangerous hope in ‘The Hunger Games” (Mennonite World Review)
Jeffrey Weiss, “Starving for Religion in ‘Hunger Games’” (Real Clear Religion)
Values & Capitalism, The Hunger Games Roundup
Become a fan of First Things on Facebook, subscribe to First Things via RSS, and follow First Things on Twitter.
Comments:
Perhaps, Ms Collins is a Christian who missed a great opportunity. Perhaps she is still to be called by Christ...I don't know. I'm just glad she didn't use this platform to mock religion. I thank God for the wonderful story she produced.
St. Augustine wrote of a friend who was addicted to the games. Rene Gerard would say that human sacrifice is the default religion of mankind, so it's little wonder this story is compelling.
The question seems to be: Toward what is it compelling us? From a Catholic vantage point, the contemporary west seems every bit as heathen as Rome was before it was cleansed by Christianity. And the Hunger Games sounds like a case in point.
It seems to me that a book's worth is not merely a product of its verbal content, but rather of the transcendent truths that it contains, and not always explicitly. Many people had problems with Milton's "Paradise Lost" because it seemed to portray Satan as the hero of the story. But what truth does this demonstrate? That many times evil is more attractive than the good!
In terms of literature, I think we must do as St. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians: "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good."
Now it may be that a dose of Christianity might have benefited the citizens of Panem - but Suzanne Collins wanted an evil society for the story to have power. So getting rid of religion made sense. Forcing religion into the story could only have made it weaker.
Of course I realize that Christians are trying to colonize the ideas and tropes of this work - linking Peeta's gift of bread to Christian symbolism, or Katniss' sacrifice for her sister with Calvary, or such guff. Fact is, Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on sacrifice, unselfishness or integrity. And hope is certainly not a concept only available to Christians. The sacrifice of Katniss, the generosity of Peeta, the triumph of the District 12 team by a death that wasn't are all vital parts of a secular philosophy.
In short, she's the Mockingjay, not Jeanne D'arc! Deal with it.
I think it might be more clear when we see that the Hunger Games merely reveals a microcosmic snapshot of one or two persons that might spark a release and some freedom from an oppressive state...but for how long and how wide spread? Seemingly the oppression has occurred for a long time and the liberty that would ensue might occur for a while, but given the longevity of human history or the cosmos for that matter, it is possible that the hope offered is relatively short lived.
Divine hope is justified by what God as promised and delivered upon in the past and will be fully actualized in the future for all time and to all people everywhere...an eternal cosmic hope from God to humanity. I think it is appropriate to distinguish that from what is offered in the Hunger Games. I cannot help but think of John 4:14 and being thirsty and drinking from the spring of eternal life and never thirsting again. That, I think, marks a stark difference between the two kinds of hope mentioned here.
In the second book, there is a moment where the main character describes a very old painting that includes depictions of "babies with wings", i.e. cherubim. I think Collins makes a deliberate allusion to what can happen in a world stripped of faith and religion, of an absolute moral order.
In the third book, when some of the "good guys" discuss the tactic of dual terrorist bombings designed to cause collateral damage to emergency first responders, another character is repulsed and says something to effect that some things should just be out of bounds for the good guys and gets confused stares in response. Again, I think Collins is making the point that what separates the good guys from the bad isn't just which one is the oppressor in power, but that an objective moral order exists by which we should measure ourselves and our actions.
Victorius66: Tolkien referred to God throughout the LOTR. Bilbo was "meant to find the ring." Gandalf was resurrected. Sauron was the devil's right-hand-man. The Elves sailed off to the "Undying Land," which was inhabited by the "Valar" (angels). When Saruman died, his spirit looked longingly into the West and was blown away Eastwards, i.e., he went to the hot place.
†
I would say that perhaps unintentionally this effect is true for The Hunger Games. its virtues are instantly recognizable to us, as other commenters have already stated. However, it may be that its evils are more recognizable to our young than to us. Here is why:
We are already living with Panem. It is the world inside a mother's womb. One day, if it is found that children are conscious before birth, perhaps their stories will read like The Hunger Games.
In any case, don't be surprised if our young people have absorbed the hopelessness of our culture of death and see it reflected in The Hunger Games, which at least they can freely think and talk about, and see movies about. At least with this story, they won't have their elders, especially the President, constantly telling them that the multiplied deaths of the defenseless are a good and necessary thing for our society to go on, and forbidding them to think otherwise.
Food only for discussion, rather. It's noteworthy that those three locations have had the widest and deepest famines of the world in the last 100 years. The Hunger Games is well named.
Remember also the "hunger for hearing the word of God" that the prophet prophesied, and that was fulfilled in the 400 silent years before John the Baptist. This is cause for hope as well, since we know that though Jesus will be returning a second time to find the world worse than it was at his first coming, it is he who will be returning. For that we hope.
She is, whether intentional or not. The Latin "panem et circenses," or bread and deathly shows, was the Roman phrase for the two elements needed to control the common people and keep the empire lurching ahead. I haven't read The Hunger Games series yet (though my daughter and wife have), so this link may be explicitly mentioned, or perhaps it may be obvious to the educated readers here, but perhaps not. In our culture, Washington provides the bread and Hollywood (for now) provides the circuses.
Perhaps Collins is just providing the insight that those who rejoice in bread and circuses will in the end have neither, and bread goes first.
Panis Angelicus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panis_Angelicus
I don't have contempt prior to investigation; I have contempt after seeing corruption of the peer review process. I have written and published peer reviewed papers, and I ought to be angry and contemptuous over such frauds as Michael Mann and Phil Jones and their totalitarian methods. They undermine my profession and ought to be expelled from the profession.
Here is a quotation that is more apt about such totalitarians who suppress the truth:
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them."- The Apostle Paul, R
P.S. The broken theory of biological evolution by random chance is enabled only by such bias and frauds as well. The information system of DNA not only did not evolve; it could not have evolved. A straightforward investigation of the probabilities makes it clear that science is not what keeps the monster of evolution alive.
You might want to talk the people I know who are missionaries in East Berlin. Okay, their world isn't devoid of "references" to religion, and symbols, and dim cultural memories, but they are dealing with a thoroughly secularized people who have had every shred of religion drummed out of them, and in fact a hostility to religion in any form deeply instilled in them. Yes, there are also places like Russia where it wasn't even successfully driven all the way underground, but there are definitely places in this world that were successfully deeply secularized, if not as a matter of stamping out faith in every last individual, at least as a matter of it being erased from the broader social consciousness. It wouldn't be at all hard today to go to Tirana or Beijing and get together a small collection of characters comparable to the players in The Hunger Games who live entirely without reference to religion. Not hard at all.
Many parts of our own world contain as much injustice, violence, repression, cruelty and evil as Panem, and throughout history these conditions have been the norm more often than not. Religion, including Christianity, appears to have made little inroads on this. If anything, it's been used as much to actually preserve the evil as destroy it. particularly when religion is used as a tool to actually support the status-quo - such as in Bible-ridden America, to use one example.
Christians may claim that God has promised hope to mankind, but it's a very specific form of hope, focusing on a reward in some unspecified afterlife. Certainly this "promise" has had very little effect upon life in the physical universe. Anyone starving to death in the third world, homeless on the streets of supposed "civilized" cities, dying an agonizing death in war or chafing under repressive dictatorships might well be justified in claiming that this "hope" has very little substance.
This is perhaps the reason why conventional organized religion, with its dogma, superstition and rusted-on link with economic conservatism is losing so much ground in the modern world - to be replaced with secular humanism, atheism, or "alternate" religions such as Paganism or Witchcraft, which at least offer an alternative.
Collins is not specific as to how far in the future her story takes place, but readers are left in no doubt that some dreadful environmental / martial catastrophe takes place between now and then, which destroys much of the world. Given that organized religion is, even today, seen by a large percentage of the world's population as irrelevant, it is quite realistic that in Collins' "future dystopia" it will have died out altogether.
