Rereading The Hunger Games Trilogy 16 Years Later

After reading and watching The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes last year, I’ve been back on a Hunger Games kick. I rewatched the movies shortly after watching the prequel, and over the last couple of months, I reread the original Hunger Games trilogy.

It had been years since I’d read the books. I was obsessed with them when they came out. I even wrote Hunger Games fanfiction about what I thought the first Hunger Games would be like (it’s out there on the internet but don’t go looking for it please haha).

So, what’s it like to reread The Hunger Games 16 years later? Does the trilogy hold up? Let’s discuss each book, and then I’ll talk about the series overall. This article contains spoilers.

Book 1 – The Hunger Games

This book is still very addictive; I finished it in like a week (which is fast with my current reading pace). It’s easy to read. The narration is very straightforward and fits Katniss’ character. It did feel more YA than I remembered, but that’s not a bad thing. It is YA.

The book hooks you very quickly, with the inciting incident happening in the first chapter. Collins does a great job setting up everything readers need to know very quickly. For a full analysis of the first chapter, check out this blog post.

I forgot Peeta lost his leg; they didn’t include that in the movies. I forgot a lot about Peeta actually. He has a wider range of emotions in the books than in the movies. Like when he gets annoyed with Katniss on the roof the night before the Games. But he’s still great, and I felt for him at the end when he realizes that Katniss has just been acting like she’s in love.

Katniss also has a wider range of emotions here than in the movie, more happy ones I think, or perhaps just less scowling. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t see her face, so I just imagined her not scowling haha.

The movie stays pretty true to the book, mostly just sped things up a bit. Some of the moments in the cave would have been nice to see for building Katniss and Peeta’s relationship, but I get why they had to cut that down.

It is interesting that the movies don’t have Katniss telling Peeta that it was at least partially an act. I wonder why they made that choice. They probably just didn’t have time, but I feel like ending with that made me want to read the second book more. That’s the problem with adapting books to movies: so much gets cut. They can still make it work but it comes at a cost.

It’s wild to me that the world of Panem feels so realistic. You’d think, or perhaps hope, that people would never be cruel enough to sacrifice children this way or treat people the way the districts are treated. But all you have to do is look at history and even current events to see the incredible cruelty humans are capable of.

Book 2 – Catching Fire

Catching Fire is my favorite book in the trilogy. I love how Katniss and Peeta come to look out for each other, the way the stakes are raised in this book, the new characters introduced, and the slow unraveling of a corrupt system. The Games are so well done too; the clock arena is such a cool concept.

I felt so bad for Peeta when he learns that Katniss doesn’t return his feelings and then they still have to act like they’re in love with each other. They’re so awkward at the beginning of the book, but the way their relationship develops and strengthens throughout is well done.

The victory tour is so sadistic. It sows even more contention between the districts. You’re forced to welcome someone who either killed your children or at the very least took their place as victor. It is a clever way to get the districts to hate each other.

Katniss was never going to be able to quell the rebellion. Did Snow realize that? He had to have known, but why did he tell her to try anyway then? To punish her for the berries?

The Quarter Quell was definitely a punishment for Katniss to show her and the victors they’re still under Snow’s thumb, but it had the total opposite effect. As he says, it’s such a fragile system. The victors bridged the gap between the districts and the Capitol. When they win their Games, they become in between, both Capitol and district. So in the Quarter Quell, they aren’t just random people plucked from the districts. They’re known throughout Panem. And people couldn’t ignore the empathy they felt for the victors.

The pregnancy thing is genius. The Capitol citizens are okay with sending children into an arena to die but not a baby. It highlights exactly what’s wrong with their society. The Capitol citizens live for the drama and choose where to put their empathy. They act like they care about the tributes, but they’re so detached from them. They don’t see them as real people. But a baby forces them to humanize the victors. Of course, not enough to stop the Games, but that’s Snow’s doing. I wonder if the Capitol citizens would have stopped the Games if it were up to them.

I forgot that the Games don’t start until two-thirds of the way through the book. Collins did an excellent job with the pacing of the Games at the end and still making them feel just as full as the first Games.

Book 3 – Mockingjay

Mockingjay feels less YA than the others, perhaps because this book is so brutal. It really just takes your heart and chops it into a million pieces. While this book is probably my least favorite of the original trilogy, it’s still great. My only real complaint is that I wish Peeta were in it more. But I understand why he’s not.

I didn’t realize until this read-through that what happened to him is exactly what he said he didn’t want in book 1: “I want to die as myself . . . I don’t want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not. . . . I keep wishing I could think of a way to . . . to show the Capitol they don’t own me. That I’m more than just a piece in their Games.”

When they hijack him, they turn him into someone that he’s not, a monster. Great foreshadowing on Collins’ part, but it hurts my heart so much.

The themes of the series are really driven home in this one. The cost of change, the cost of war, where is the line, why we can’t dehumanize each other, the trauma of war. Katniss’ trauma is so real in this book; I wish that could have been in the movies more.

The uniting of the districts is so crucial for the revolution. Katniss really gets it right when she says she’s Snow’s slave. That’s why she killed Cato and everyone in the Games. They’re all Snow’s slaves, yet even people in the districts didn’t see it. Pitting the districts against each other almost worked to make it so they could never unite.

Plutarch is way less likable in the books than in the movies. He’s way more Capitol in the books. It once again drives the point home that everyone just wants to use Katniss for their own agendas.

One change I liked from the movie was Effie. I forgot that she wasn’t in this book until the end. But I love the growth they gave her character in the movies. The rest of Katniss’ prep team is more prevalent in this book, so they essentially replaced their roles with Effie, but throughout all the books, we saw more of Effie and connected more to her, so it was a good change. It still works too because she was very Capitol in the beginning just like the prep team was, and then we grew to care about her like we did for the prep team. I can’t believe how the prep team is treated in 13 though.

District 13 (and Coin) is harsher than I remembered. Coin is very detached and analytical, the opposite of the Capitol to an extreme. So compartmentalized. But as much as she contrasts with the Capitol, there’s also symmetry. Katniss really was just a tool for Coin—a piece in her games. Coin was very much like Snow that way, willing to use people for her own agenda and dispose of them when they’re no longer useful or when they are a threat.

Prim’s death drives the whole thing home. Katniss volunteered to save her sister. After everything she did, everything she went through, she still couldn’t save her. I applaud Collins for not giving in to a happy ending. Because it’s YA, Collins could have easily thought “Well, it should end happily,” but she wasn’t afraid to end it realistically.

Overall Thoughts – Does The Hunger Games still hold up?

There are a lot of books that I read in middle school and high school that I’ve tried to reread and couldn’t get through. So whenever I’m revisiting a story from back then, the question becomes is this as good as I remember?

And with this series, the answer is yes (thank goodness)! The characters are well-developed, the plot is exciting, and perhaps most importantly, the series’ themes still ring true.

So often this series gets reduced to the love triangle (because the movies marketed it that way) when that’s maybe the least interesting way to look at this series. It’s not about Peeta versus Gale. It’s about Katniss versus Katniss.

There are a lot of people who hate Gale. I don’t really get that. He is a prime example of what someone can turn into when they grow up in the situation that he does. He was forced to take care of his family from a young age, forced to live with the constant threat of death and punishment. When he saw the Capitol doing whatever it took to maintain their control, he was willing to do whatever it took to stop them. Yes, he lost sight of where the line was, but that’s so realistic in war. You do to the enemy what they’ve done to you. And I think he realizes in the end that that was the wrong way to go about it.

Gale represents that side of Katniss because she grew up in the same situation. But the Games changed Katniss. She lost a part of herself when she was forced to kill children, and Gale never understood that.

Peeta, with his natural tendency for diplomacy, represents the other side of Katniss. The side of hope and compassion and empathy. He is the boy with the bread who was willing to take a beating to feed a virtual stranger. He understood what she went through in the Games. When she “chooses” Peeta, it’s because she’s choosing that worldview. Katniss doesn’t want violence; she wants peace.

These books are still so relevant, perhaps even more relevant than when they came out. With the increasingly large role the internet plays in our lives, it’s so easy to distance ourselves from other people, see the world as us versus them. This is exactly what happened with the Capitol and the districts.

For the Capitol, the people in the districts weren’t real. They were just the ones who grew their food, made their clothes, or provided their entertainment. For the people in the districts, the Capitol citizens weren’t real. They were ridiculous with their bizarre clothes and body modifications, and not only that but they were also the people who did everything at the expense of the districts. The districts even saw other districts as separate because the capitol pitted them against each other. Other districts were their competition for the Capitol’s favor, or their children survived the Games and perhaps even killed the children from their district.

The Capitol wanted distance between all of its citizens because that is how it rooted out empathy and maintained its control. Was the collapse of the Capitol inevitable? Would it have happened eventually even without Katniss? Or would the Games and the corruption have continued? I think it was just waiting for a spark, and empathy was that spark.

Throughout the series, we see Katniss’ growth in empathy and who she’s willing to sacrifice herself for. She volunteers to save her sister. Then she allies with and honors a girl who reminds her of her sister. In her second Hunger Games, she protects Peeta over herself, fighting for him to win. But she also grows to see the other victors as human, and she doesn’t want to kill them. In book three, she asks for pardons for all victors, protects her prep team, and puts her life on the line for strangers. She fights in the war for a better future for everyone in Panem. It’s the empathy that wins out in the end—a surprisingly hopeful message for a series that contains so much heartache.

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Those are my thoughts after rereading The Hunger Games Trilogy. Let me know your thoughts on this series and if you’ve reread it recently in the comments. To see my thoughts on other stories, click here.