The Hunger Games Trilogy as a Text for Education
The Hunger Games Trilogy as a Text for Education

Summary/Abstract: Suzanne Collinses dystopian Young Adult novel series, The Hunger Games trilogy, released from 2008 through 2010, triggered not only world-wide fandom, but also provoked extensive examination by literary scholars and cultural critics. The enthusiastic reader-response to the novels echoes the success of the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) and The Twilight Saga (2005- 2008); yet, ironically, this popularity of the text (and its movie adaptations), together with the fact that the primarily targeted audience is the young adult community, raises skepticism about the workers literary value. Many scholars and instructors therefore reject the idea of using the novels for educational purposes—although it is generally agreed that the genre of dystopia allows for the discussion of extremely important social and cultural issues by way of defamiliarization. As M. Keith Booker contends, “[B]y focusing their critiques of society on spatially or temporally distant settings, dystopian fictions provide fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitable”. Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry note how utopian and dystopian literature may turn their readers more inclined to political action ; however, reading such texts for pure pleasure, or reading them in an educational context may make a huge difference in the desired outcome. While Melissa Ames underlines that the younger generation may not be as apolitical as studies recurrently imply (8), undoubtedly, “strategic instruction [of dystopian texts] often increases their overall impact”.

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