Picture the last book you read. What kind of characters were in it? What did the main character look like? Every book we read we have a simple image in our head that helps us relate to the characters at hand.
This is guided by not only our imagination, but the authors description as well. In the Hunger Games we are presented with the character Rue. Her description is such” And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that’s she’s very like Prim in size and demeanor…”(Suzanne Collins). From this description we can assume that Rue is a young black child. Fans reading her books had no problem accepting this, but when the movie aired Rue was immediately met with backlash and criticism. People even go as far to call her a “Black B****” or the N word just because of her color in the movie. My shock to hear and reading these things was prominent. How could a whole fan base fall so deeply in love with this innocent little girl and then savagely rip her apart as soon as they learn her skin color doesn’t match the picture they had in their head. This unfortunately shows just where we are in our society today. It is incredibly eye opening to sit back and see these reactions all to a Childs skin color. Suzanna Collins provokes her readers to see the similarities between her writing and the world we live in. This instance shows that her work and the reactions it gets truly is mirrored to our society. 