Hunger Games: A New Shared Text?

It’s been sixteen years since the publication of the first Hunger Games novel.

Today, The Epoch Times published an editorial, ‘Hunger Games is Fiction No More.’

See here, here, and here for similar pieces that were posted at the premiere of the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

The BookRiot article noted that Suzanne Collins’ YA dystopian novels started a trend:

The Hunger Games, in particular, catapulted YA dystopian novels into the spotlight. Future bestselling series like Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Selection by Kiera Cass, The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancy, Legend by Marie Lu, Matched by Ally Condie, and Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi built some of their readership from fans of The Hunger Games. Dystopian and YA books had, of course, been matched up before in books like The Giver by Lois Lowry, Feed by M.T. Anderson, and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. But none of them had the same monumental sales of The Hunger Games to truly create such a publishing phenomenon.

None of those series have continued to be part of the working vernacular when discussing the nature of 21st Century life in general and politics in particular, either.

We’ve written a lot here about the Hunger Games novels, especially the third book in the original trilogy, Mockingjay.  I wrote at the time and still think it is a legitimate point that Collins’ achievement is at least as great as what Rowling attempted and pulled off in the Hogwarts Saga, if only because of the political allegory and embedded romance in her soul triptych, literary alchemy, and structural artistry. Check out that library of posts here.

Even having said all that, I was startled by The Epoch Times article because I never expected Hunger Games to achieve anything like Shared Text status or that people would be talking about it after the better part of two decades. (I was not positively impressed by the film adaptations and they seem to be what most people remember of them, an impression I suspected would not be a lasting one because movies do not shape the imagination as reading codex does.)

And yet here we are, with popular media assuming we know who Katniss Everdeen is and why her leading a populist revolt against the Capitol elite is a relevant metaphor for the world today and its dystopian qualities.

Three questions for those Hunger Games readers out there:

(1) Why do you think Hunger Games is (or is not) a ‘Shared Text’ of our times while the other popular YA dystopian series before and after its publication have largely been forgotten?

(2) Is the series’ staying power and continued relevance down to the timeless brilliance of Collins’ conception of the story and execution of the trilogy, the fit with its popular revolt against the leftist and right wings of corporate-government oligarchy and fascism and daily news reports, or is it just the Jennifer Lawrence’ effect?

(3) Do you want us to discuss the new Collins’ Hunger Games prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping, due in March 2025, the way we would a new Strike novel or other work by Rowling-Galbraith? (I know Elizabeth and I are up to that, if there is interest here.)

Have at it in the comments thread below!