My inbox filled up with Hunger Games notes this morning I am just now getting around to sharing.

First Things ran a wonderfully thoughtful piece by Aaron Rogers on the central place of sacrifice in the Panem trilogy and especially Katniss’ difficulty in accepting sacrificial love as a gift rather than a debt for which she must pay in kind. (Hat tip, Kathleen!) The author is hesitant at best in making the ‘Peeta as Christ figure’ connection but his conclusions are important, I think, both in the life of every believer who feels burdened or obliged in faith and, a point he doesn’t make, in grasping why Peeta comes into her life when he does — only at her greatest need and as she sacrifices herself for the family she loves. Do read the whole thing and let me know what you think: ‘Debt, Gift, and Sacrifice in The Hunger Games.’ And yes, I loved the opening paragraph:

The book, The Hunger Games, is of course better than the movie. The book’s story moves with the internal dialogue of the teen protagonist, Katniss. In contrast, the film’s story moves along through events external to Katniss. As a result of this shift, the film throws away our window into Katniss’s mind and, significantly, into her moral psychology, both of which are by far the most engaging part of the book (and the entire trilogy of books for that matter).

Shared Text: BookByte, the textbook re-selling firm online is running a promotion this week called ‘The Plunder Games.’ The gag line is “Not Quite as Deadly. No Less Epic.” The books are quickly achieving shared text status due to the hit movie which makes me doubt their staying power, even if millions learn about and actually read the novels after meeting JLawr/Katniss and President Sutherland/Snow. I hope I’m wrong because the books merit their mania status without the cinema hype.

About this advertisement, Prof. Baird-Hardy pronounced, “Tesserae for Textbooks!” It’s a much better tagline (no gagging), if, I suppose, a little too close to the truth behind the ‘deal.’

The Hunger Games Trilogy Cake: A picture here is worth all the words I could use — and I urge you to go to the wonderful web site, FictionalFood.net, to see all the other pictures of (and read the full story of) this spectacular Hawaiian treat. Hat tip, John Patrick!

Please share your favorite Hunger Games links crowding your inbox in the comment spaces below, as well as your thoughts about Katniss and sacrifice, Tesserae for Textbooks, and letting Panem fans eat cake!

No joke, it’s not just our friends at Foxtrot that are experiencing this craze. There is a big surge in young archers at clinics, demonstrations, and shooting ranges consequent to the Hunger Games movie splash. Check out Hunger Games Fever Makes Archery Cool for Kids.

NEW YORK – In schools and backyards, for their birthdays and out with their dads, kids are gaga for archery four weeks into the box office run of “The Hunger Games” and less than 100 days before the London Olympics.

“All of a sudden sales of bows have, like, tripled,” said Paul Haines, a salesman at the Ramsey Outdoor store in Paramus, N.J.

A manager there made a sign for the hunting department: “Quality bows for serious archers and girls who saw the movie,” he said.

[Read more…]

I am back from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and St. John The Baptist Orthodox Church (right), where my family celebrated Holy Friday, Holy Saturday, and Pascha this past weekend. My older daughters were able to join us which made the occasion even more memorable and joyous.

I had a Hunger Games thought, believe it or not, during the beautiful Lamentations burial service on Friday night. After the procession of the Lord’s Burial Shroud outside the Church, it is placed as His body into the tomb in the center of the nave where the congregation stands, women to the left, men to the right. Those gathered then venerate the Shroud one at a time after making several prostrations before the tomb.

The Hunger Games image that was striking, I think, to all of us there in my family who had recently read the Suzanne Collins novel was that, after placing the Shroud or epitaphios on the table-tomb, a cloth on which Christ’s crucified body is sewn, the priest and other clergy and lay people cover it with flowers. The resemblance of the adored and beflowered divine corpse and Katniss’ decoration of Rue’s slain body at her death was striking.

And, yes, I thought, if the ‘Rue’ = ‘Conscience’ = ‘Christ’ connection needed to be made, this was a visual argument, of sorts, or at least a remarkable mental picture and parallel of grief for a sinless, seemingly senseless death. It is the image that haunts Katniss throughout the rest of the Games trilogy and one so poignant that Peeta, the Christ symbol who rises from the dead soon after Rue’s death, uses it to shame the Gamesmakers in the Capitol in Catching Fire.

Is Rue’s flower shroud meant to recall the epitaphios venerated on Holy Friday? I have speculated elsewhere that Collins is Roman Catholic (for which there is no evidence outside of story points, if it seems to have become Wikipedia fact), but, even if she is, I do not think this is Catholic practice, except for that faith’s Uniate churches. As striking as the parallel and image is, especially when tied into Peeta’s victory over death in his tomb-cave as a prologue, I think we’d need Ms. Collins’ confirmation to say it with anything like certainty.

To this Orthodox Christian, however, on Holy Friday, the connection was striking as I said and an edifying echo of the historical and eternal event we were entering. If Collins turns out to be Orthodox or a Byzantine Roman Catholic (‘uniates’ are Catholics that use Orthodox liturgies rather than western rites), I think I’d shift this connection from “interesting possibility but unlikely’ to “probable association.’