{"id":444,"date":"2015-10-30T10:34:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T10:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrmushava.wordpress.com\/2015\/10\/30\/hunger-management-and-power-processes\/"},"modified":"2026-10-25T15:38:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-25T15:38:47","slug":"hunger-management-and-power-processes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=444","title":{"rendered":"Hunger Management and Power Processes"},"content":{"rendered":"<table align=\"center\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" class=\"tr-caption-container\" style=\"float: left;margin-right: 1em;text-align: left\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"text-align: center\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"http:\/\/www.technologytell.com\/gadgets\/files\/2012\/03\/hunger-games-trilogy-kobo-books-640.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.technologytell.com\/gadgets\/files\/2012\/03\/hunger-games-trilogy-kobo-books-640.jpg\" height=\"176\" style=\"margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto\" width=\"400\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td class=\"tr-caption\" style=\"text-align: center\"><span><span style=\"font-size: x-small\">The <i>Hunger Games <\/i>Trilogy <\/span><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span>Many rivers, thirsty children, burning streets.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cThe <span class=\"il\">Hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Games<\/span>\u201d trilogy is an allegory of our time.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>In the highly regarded set, featuring \u201cThe <span class=\"il\">Hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Games<\/span>,\u201d \u201cCatching Fire,\u201d and \u201cMockingjay,\u201d Suzanne Collins cuts away from the moody complexes, which are the materials for young adult fiction, to a frighteningly real world, our own.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The set merits a monumental rating, not just for the captivating style sheet but also the allegorical precision with which Collins courses her scalpel through a hemorrhaging planet.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The arena of the <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">games<\/span> calls to mind a collage of trouble spots where extreme poverty, oppression and conflict are all the rage.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The cross-fading of airbrushed television personae with the devastation of war presents unsettling juxtapositions.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Collins says she developed the concept from watching footage from the invasion of Iraq \u201cblur in an unsettling way\u201d with reality TV, an odious association given her childhood anxiety over her father\u2019s service in the Vietnam War.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Here she becomes the voice of one crying in \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d: \u201cI will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; Iwill show you your fear in a handful of dust.\u201d<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Although the series imports elements of Greek mythology, setting themto a futuristic score, it is not distant from the world as we know it today.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>It is a deconstruction of power systems, an indictment on war, a care package for the economically disenfranchised and an incisive critique of oppression.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>In a promo for the trilogy, Collins addresses a question on what she wants her readers to ultimately take away from the popular series.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cHow do you feel about the fact that some people take their next mealfor granted when others are starving?\u201d Collins inquires back.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cWhat do you feel about choices your government, past or present, and other choices governments around the world make?<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cWhat\u2019s your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cWas there anything in the book that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life and, if there was, what do you intend to do about it?\u201d she challenges.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>No mean scope to demand of young readers, but \u201cThe <span class=\"il\">Hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Games<\/span>\u201d runs that tapestry.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The young adult label attached to series belies a penetrating deconstruction of the <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> management and blood rites which sustain capitalist empires and despotic regimes.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Collins deploys a dystopian thread to present a world of contradictions where injustice is consolidated on one side and suffering commercialised on the other.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Trace headstream few of the trending reports: 60 million refugees, hundreds of thousands of youths braving treacherous waters to uncertain destinations, millions out of employment.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>A perennial expanse of trouble spots stretching even into world\u2019s newest nation, South Sudan.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>While the trail of destruction as we see it is disturbing enough, Collins blows the cover off the system behind the works.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The suffering we have come to take for the default state of the world does not happen spontaneously but is planned and executed by groups bent to the imposition and legitimation of their power whatever the values at stake.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Collins seems to be staging, after Hamlet, a prose edition of \u201cMousetrap\u201d for power-drunk, warmongering world leaders.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>In the <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">games<\/span>, 24 four tributes, that is, a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 from each of the 12 districts of post-apocalyptic Panem are dispatched into the arena to fight each other to death till one contestant remains.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Collins\u2019 incorporation of sponsorship and rewards into the <span class=\"il\">games<\/span> seems to satirise the inconsequential incentives by which the oppressed are motivated to fight each other to prop up their oppressors.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">games<\/span> are staged annually to punish the districts for their foiled rebellion against the Capitol, 74 years before the narration.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Much like how the world\u2019s most vulnerable are crushed to enhance the levers of global capitalism and to defend despots.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>As if extreme poverty is not enough, displacement and a perpetual atmosphere of death is everyday life for millions as some world leaders have their interests in the same equation with human suffering.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Tuku prefaces a live recording of his wartime classic \u201cChido Chenyu Here?\u201d with a question on whether conflict and suffering are the default state of the world.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>With much of the violence today legitimated by invocation of the divine and shady powers in coalescence to avert justice from the oppressed, even as vast populations are crunched into washbasins, it is a question many are just as compelled to ask.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>But suffering is instituted not by God\u2019s design but man\u2019s inhumanity to man.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cThe <span class=\"il\">Hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Games<\/span>\u201d blows the cover off architects of suffering who would have the vulnerable resign to insecurity as to fate, when, in remote enclosures leaders are dashing, as pawns on their political chessboards, those that they should be defending.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>This is what dawns on protagonist, Katniss, when after defeating the Capitol, ostensibly to undo its excesses, the leaders of District Thirteen set about consolidating their newfound power with the same stratagems, including initiating <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">games<\/span> in which children from the Capitol will be forced to kill each other.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cWas it like this then?\u201d the brutal truth registers on Katniss, who has just lost her beloved 12-year older Prim in an indiscriminate power campaign by the leaders of Thirteen, targeting the children to further asperse the Capitol.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cDid a group of people sit around and cast their votes initiating the<span class=\"il\"> Hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Games<\/span>? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy but was beaten down by the calls for the deaths of the districts\u2019 children&#8230;<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cAll those people I loved dead, and we are discussing the next <span class=\"il\">Hunger<\/span><span class=\"il\"> Games<\/span> in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now,\u201d Katniss processes the moment of truth, the corruption of power.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The death of twelve-year old Prim on the frontline of a conflict where the plotters themselves are unscathed is an emotive case for child soldiers and civilian casualties in the world\u2019s trouble spots.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Will the world ever wake up to the implications of power rites in which the future is sacrificed to prop up the failures of yesterday?<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Collins not only works her scalpel through the corruption of power but also the dissoluteness of the mob.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Crowds watch for entertainment children fighting each other to the death in the <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">games<\/span> arena, settling for one against the other, as if the children or the districts by themselves are enemies.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The districts are not only divided but play naively to the stratagems of the Capitol and, although they are swayed by each slight play on their emotions on the TV screen, they do not follow through the logical conclusions of their condition as the oppressed.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>The question of nuclear brinkmanship in the world today is also brought up in \u201cMockingjay,\u201d with the protagonist fretting on the implications of a possible nuclear attack as the war between the Capitol and District Thirteen intensifies.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cWould they be any protection against a nuclear attack? And even if they were one hundred percent effective at sealing out the radiation, which is really unlikely, would we ever be able to leave this place? The thought of spending whatever remains of my life in this stone vault horrifies me,\u201d Katniss reflects.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>\u201cThe <span class=\"il\">Hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">Games<\/span>\u201d trilogy ends on a happy note, with the romantic jigsaw resolved as Katniss agrees to marry Peeta, her screen lover during the <span class=\"il\">games<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>However, nightmares from the killing fields persist years after the destruction of the arena and abolition of the <span class=\"il\">hunger<\/span> <span class=\"il\">games<\/span>.<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><\/span><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-size: small\"><span><br \/>Reflecting on the devastation of war, the protagonist sometimes feels she can longer take pleasure in anything, not even her beloved family, for feel that it can be taken away.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hunger Games Trilogy Many rivers, thirsty children, burning streets.\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d trilogy is an allegory of our time.In the highly regarded set, featuring \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d \u201cCatching Fire,\u201d and \u201cMockingjay,\u201d Suzanne Collins cuts away from the moody complexes, which are the materials for young adult fiction, to a frighteningly real world, our own.The set merits a monumental rating, not just for the captivating style sheet but also the allegorical precision with which Collins courses her scalpel through a hemorrhaging planet.The arena of the hunger games calls to mind a collage of trouble spots where extreme poverty, oppression and conflict are all the rage.The cross-fading of airbrushed television personae with the devastation of war presents unsettling juxtapositions.Collins says she developed the concept from watching footage from the invasion of Iraq \u201cblur in an unsettling way\u201d with reality TV, an odious association given her childhood anxiety over her father\u2019s service in the Vietnam War.Here she becomes the voice of one crying in \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d: \u201cI will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; Iwill show you your fear in a handful of dust.\u201dAlthough the series imports elements of Greek mythology, setting themto a futuristic score, it is not distant from the world as we know it today.It is a deconstruction of power systems, an indictment on war, a care package for the economically disenfranchised and an incisive critique of oppression.In a promo for the trilogy, Collins addresses a question on what she wants her readers to ultimately take away from the popular series.\u201cHow do you feel about the fact that some people take their next mealfor granted when others are starving?\u201d Collins inquires back.\u201cWhat do you feel about choices your government, past or present, and other choices governments around the world make?\u201cWhat\u2019s your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?\u201cWas there anything in the book that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life and, if there was, what do you intend to do about it?\u201d she challenges.No mean scope to demand of young readers, but \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d runs that tapestry.The young adult label attached to series belies a penetrating deconstruction of the hunger management and blood rites which sustain capitalist empires and despotic regimes.Collins deploys a dystopian thread to present a world of contradictions where injustice is consolidated on one side and suffering commercialised on the other.Trace headstream few of the trending reports: 60 million refugees, hundreds of thousands of youths braving treacherous waters to uncertain destinations, millions out of employment.A perennial expanse of trouble spots stretching even into world\u2019s newest nation, South Sudan.While the trail of destruction as we see it is disturbing enough, Collins blows the cover off the system behind the works.The suffering we have come to take for the default state of the world does not happen spontaneously but is planned and executed by groups bent to the imposition and legitimation of their power whatever the values at stake.Collins seems to be staging, after Hamlet, a prose edition of \u201cMousetrap\u201d for power-drunk, warmongering world leaders.In the hunger games, 24 four tributes, that is, a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 from each of the 12 districts of post-apocalyptic Panem are dispatched into the arena to fight each other to death till one contestant remains.Collins\u2019 incorporation of sponsorship and rewards into the games seems to satirise the inconsequential incentives by which the oppressed are motivated to fight each other to prop up their oppressors.The hunger games are staged annually to punish the districts for their foiled rebellion against the Capitol, 74 years before the narration.Much like how the world\u2019s most vulnerable are crushed to enhance the levers of global capitalism and to defend despots.As if extreme poverty is not enough, displacement and a perpetual atmosphere of death is everyday life for millions as some world leaders have their interests in the same equation with human suffering.Tuku prefaces a live recording of his wartime classic \u201cChido Chenyu Here?\u201d with a question on whether conflict and suffering are the default state of the world.With much of the violence today legitimated by invocation of the divine and shady powers in coalescence to avert justice from the oppressed, even as vast populations are crunched into washbasins, it is a question many are just as compelled to ask.But suffering is instituted not by God\u2019s design but man\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d blows the cover off architects of suffering who would have the vulnerable resign to insecurity as to fate, when, in remote enclosures leaders are dashing, as pawns on their political chessboards, those that they should be defending.This is what dawns on protagonist, Katniss, when after defeating the Capitol, ostensibly to undo its excesses, the leaders of District Thirteen set about consolidating their newfound power with the same stratagems, including initiating hunger games in which children from the Capitol will be forced to kill each other.\u201cWas it like this then?\u201d the brutal truth registers on Katniss, who has just lost her beloved 12-year older Prim in an indiscriminate power campaign by the leaders of Thirteen, targeting the children to further asperse the Capitol.\u201cDid a group of people sit around and cast their votes initiating the Hunger Games? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy but was beaten down by the calls for the deaths of the districts\u2019 children&#8230;\u201cAll those people I loved dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now,\u201d Katniss processes the moment of truth, the corruption of power.The death of twelve-year old Prim on the frontline of a conflict where the plotters themselves are unscathed is an emotive case for child soldiers and civilian casualties in the world\u2019s trouble spots.Will the world ever wake up to the implications of power rites in which the future is sacrificed to prop up the failures of yesterday?Collins not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Hunger Management and Power Processes | Blockspace<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=444\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hunger Management and Power Processes | Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hunger Games Trilogy Many rivers, thirsty children, burning streets.\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d trilogy is an allegory of our time.In the highly regarded set, featuring \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d \u201cCatching Fire,\u201d and \u201cMockingjay,\u201d Suzanne Collins cuts away from the moody complexes, which are the materials for young adult fiction, to a frighteningly real world, our own.The set merits a monumental rating, not just for the captivating style sheet but also the allegorical precision with which Collins courses her scalpel through a hemorrhaging planet.The arena of the hunger games calls to mind a collage of trouble spots where extreme poverty, oppression and conflict are all the rage.The cross-fading of airbrushed television personae with the devastation of war presents unsettling juxtapositions.Collins says she developed the concept from watching footage from the invasion of Iraq \u201cblur in an unsettling way\u201d with reality TV, an odious association given her childhood anxiety over her father\u2019s service in the Vietnam War.Here she becomes the voice of one crying in \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d: \u201cI will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; Iwill show you your fear in a handful of dust.\u201dAlthough the series imports elements of Greek mythology, setting themto a futuristic score, it is not distant from the world as we know it today.It is a deconstruction of power systems, an indictment on war, a care package for the economically disenfranchised and an incisive critique of oppression.In a promo for the trilogy, Collins addresses a question on what she wants her readers to ultimately take away from the popular series.\u201cHow do you feel about the fact that some people take their next mealfor granted when others are starving?\u201d Collins inquires back.\u201cWhat do you feel about choices your government, past or present, and other choices governments around the world make?\u201cWhat\u2019s your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?\u201cWas there anything in the book that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life and, if there was, what do you intend to do about it?\u201d she challenges.No mean scope to demand of young readers, but \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d runs that tapestry.The young adult label attached to series belies a penetrating deconstruction of the hunger management and blood rites which sustain capitalist empires and despotic regimes.Collins deploys a dystopian thread to present a world of contradictions where injustice is consolidated on one side and suffering commercialised on the other.Trace headstream few of the trending reports: 60 million refugees, hundreds of thousands of youths braving treacherous waters to uncertain destinations, millions out of employment.A perennial expanse of trouble spots stretching even into world\u2019s newest nation, South Sudan.While the trail of destruction as we see it is disturbing enough, Collins blows the cover off the system behind the works.The suffering we have come to take for the default state of the world does not happen spontaneously but is planned and executed by groups bent to the imposition and legitimation of their power whatever the values at stake.Collins seems to be staging, after Hamlet, a prose edition of \u201cMousetrap\u201d for power-drunk, warmongering world leaders.In the hunger games, 24 four tributes, that is, a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 from each of the 12 districts of post-apocalyptic Panem are dispatched into the arena to fight each other to death till one contestant remains.Collins\u2019 incorporation of sponsorship and rewards into the games seems to satirise the inconsequential incentives by which the oppressed are motivated to fight each other to prop up their oppressors.The hunger games are staged annually to punish the districts for their foiled rebellion against the Capitol, 74 years before the narration.Much like how the world\u2019s most vulnerable are crushed to enhance the levers of global capitalism and to defend despots.As if extreme poverty is not enough, displacement and a perpetual atmosphere of death is everyday life for millions as some world leaders have their interests in the same equation with human suffering.Tuku prefaces a live recording of his wartime classic \u201cChido Chenyu Here?\u201d with a question on whether conflict and suffering are the default state of the world.With much of the violence today legitimated by invocation of the divine and shady powers in coalescence to avert justice from the oppressed, even as vast populations are crunched into washbasins, it is a question many are just as compelled to ask.But suffering is instituted not by God\u2019s design but man\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d blows the cover off architects of suffering who would have the vulnerable resign to insecurity as to fate, when, in remote enclosures leaders are dashing, as pawns on their political chessboards, those that they should be defending.This is what dawns on protagonist, Katniss, when after defeating the Capitol, ostensibly to undo its excesses, the leaders of District Thirteen set about consolidating their newfound power with the same stratagems, including initiating hunger games in which children from the Capitol will be forced to kill each other.\u201cWas it like this then?\u201d the brutal truth registers on Katniss, who has just lost her beloved 12-year older Prim in an indiscriminate power campaign by the leaders of Thirteen, targeting the children to further asperse the Capitol.\u201cDid a group of people sit around and cast their votes initiating the Hunger Games? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy but was beaten down by the calls for the deaths of the districts\u2019 children&#8230;\u201cAll those people I loved dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now,\u201d Katniss processes the moment of truth, the corruption of power.The death of twelve-year old Prim on the frontline of a conflict where the plotters themselves are unscathed is an emotive case for child soldiers and civilian casualties in the world\u2019s trouble spots.Will the world ever wake up to the implications of power rites in which the future is sacrificed to prop up the failures of yesterday?Collins not\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=444\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Blockspace\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-10-30T10:34:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-10-25T15:38:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.technologytell.com\/gadgets\/files\/2012\/03\/hunger-games-trilogy-kobo-books-640.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hardsouth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" 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\/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hunger Management and Power Processes | Blockspace","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=444","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hunger Management and Power Processes | Blockspace","og_description":"The Hunger Games Trilogy Many rivers, thirsty children, burning streets.\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d trilogy is an allegory of our time.In the highly regarded set, featuring \u201cThe Hunger Games,\u201d \u201cCatching Fire,\u201d and \u201cMockingjay,\u201d Suzanne Collins cuts away from the moody complexes, which are the materials for young adult fiction, to a frighteningly real world, our own.The set merits a monumental rating, not just for the captivating style sheet but also the allegorical precision with which Collins courses her scalpel through a hemorrhaging planet.The arena of the hunger games calls to mind a collage of trouble spots where extreme poverty, oppression and conflict are all the rage.The cross-fading of airbrushed television personae with the devastation of war presents unsettling juxtapositions.Collins says she developed the concept from watching footage from the invasion of Iraq \u201cblur in an unsettling way\u201d with reality TV, an odious association given her childhood anxiety over her father\u2019s service in the Vietnam War.Here she becomes the voice of one crying in \u201cThe Wasteland\u201d: \u201cI will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; Iwill show you your fear in a handful of dust.\u201dAlthough the series imports elements of Greek mythology, setting themto a futuristic score, it is not distant from the world as we know it today.It is a deconstruction of power systems, an indictment on war, a care package for the economically disenfranchised and an incisive critique of oppression.In a promo for the trilogy, Collins addresses a question on what she wants her readers to ultimately take away from the popular series.\u201cHow do you feel about the fact that some people take their next mealfor granted when others are starving?\u201d Collins inquires back.\u201cWhat do you feel about choices your government, past or present, and other choices governments around the world make?\u201cWhat\u2019s your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?\u201cWas there anything in the book that disturbed you because it reflected aspects of your own life and, if there was, what do you intend to do about it?\u201d she challenges.No mean scope to demand of young readers, but \u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d runs that tapestry.The young adult label attached to series belies a penetrating deconstruction of the hunger management and blood rites which sustain capitalist empires and despotic regimes.Collins deploys a dystopian thread to present a world of contradictions where injustice is consolidated on one side and suffering commercialised on the other.Trace headstream few of the trending reports: 60 million refugees, hundreds of thousands of youths braving treacherous waters to uncertain destinations, millions out of employment.A perennial expanse of trouble spots stretching even into world\u2019s newest nation, South Sudan.While the trail of destruction as we see it is disturbing enough, Collins blows the cover off the system behind the works.The suffering we have come to take for the default state of the world does not happen spontaneously but is planned and executed by groups bent to the imposition and legitimation of their power whatever the values at stake.Collins seems to be staging, after Hamlet, a prose edition of \u201cMousetrap\u201d for power-drunk, warmongering world leaders.In the hunger games, 24 four tributes, that is, a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 from each of the 12 districts of post-apocalyptic Panem are dispatched into the arena to fight each other to death till one contestant remains.Collins\u2019 incorporation of sponsorship and rewards into the games seems to satirise the inconsequential incentives by which the oppressed are motivated to fight each other to prop up their oppressors.The hunger games are staged annually to punish the districts for their foiled rebellion against the Capitol, 74 years before the narration.Much like how the world\u2019s most vulnerable are crushed to enhance the levers of global capitalism and to defend despots.As if extreme poverty is not enough, displacement and a perpetual atmosphere of death is everyday life for millions as some world leaders have their interests in the same equation with human suffering.Tuku prefaces a live recording of his wartime classic \u201cChido Chenyu Here?\u201d with a question on whether conflict and suffering are the default state of the world.With much of the violence today legitimated by invocation of the divine and shady powers in coalescence to avert justice from the oppressed, even as vast populations are crunched into washbasins, it is a question many are just as compelled to ask.But suffering is instituted not by God\u2019s design but man\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u201cThe Hunger Games\u201d blows the cover off architects of suffering who would have the vulnerable resign to insecurity as to fate, when, in remote enclosures leaders are dashing, as pawns on their political chessboards, those that they should be defending.This is what dawns on protagonist, Katniss, when after defeating the Capitol, ostensibly to undo its excesses, the leaders of District Thirteen set about consolidating their newfound power with the same stratagems, including initiating hunger games in which children from the Capitol will be forced to kill each other.\u201cWas it like this then?\u201d the brutal truth registers on Katniss, who has just lost her beloved 12-year older Prim in an indiscriminate power campaign by the leaders of Thirteen, targeting the children to further asperse the Capitol.\u201cDid a group of people sit around and cast their votes initiating the Hunger Games? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy but was beaten down by the calls for the deaths of the districts\u2019 children&#8230;\u201cAll those people I loved dead, and we are discussing the next Hunger Games in an attempt to avoid wasting life. Nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change now,\u201d Katniss processes the moment of truth, the corruption of power.The death of twelve-year old Prim on the frontline of a conflict where the plotters themselves are unscathed is an emotive case for child soldiers and civilian casualties in the world\u2019s trouble spots.Will the world ever wake up to the implications of power rites in which the future is sacrificed to prop up the failures of yesterday?Collins not","og_url":"https:\/\/blockspaceballads.com\/?p=444","og_site_name":"Blockspace","article_published_time":"2015-10-30T10:34:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-10-25T15:38:47+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.technologytell.com\/gadgets\/files\/2012\/03\/hunger-games-trilogy-kobo-books-640.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"hardsouth","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"hardsouth","Est. reading time":"6 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