I read The Hunger Games in elementary school, but I read so many books that the thought of televising children murdering each other for entertainment was not as shocking, but just a part of the plot line. Now that I re-read it, the implications of this story are more horrifying. Suzanne Collins paints an absurd picture of a society where people who live in the Capitol drip with excess: they eat extravagantly, have insane fashion standards that constantly change, and seem to have little to no understanding of the struggles of everyday people, like when Effie Trinket makes fun of the previous Tributes who ate with no table manners because they’ve never in their whole lives been provided with that much food. The absurdity of this society is exactly what makes people start to wonder, does this really happen?
The top 1% of today’s society owns 50% of U.S. stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, in addition to taking home more of the nation’s income than at any other time since the 1920s. Recently, Alyona Zaitseva, the daughter of local property and oil tycoon Vasily Zaitsev, ran over nine people, killing six and critically injuring three. If you watch the video, the Lexus plows not forward across the intersection, but diagonally into the pedestrian crosswalk. According to the article, Zaitseva is fine, and after she ran these people over, her armed bodyguards came out to protect her from the angry crowd. Likely, she will face very little jail time, or perhaps, none at all, because her oil tycoon father plans to “compensate” families for their loss. In the article, images of carnage and censored body parts flung across the cement are juxtaposed with the beautiful Alyona Zaitseva posing while wearing thousand dollar Louboutins.
It’s terrifying to see how many parallels in just this one case of a privileged white girl with the “absurdness” of the Capitol culture, which seems to be less and less absurd. President Snow is constantly guarded by Peacekeepers, even though plenty of people hate him for putting in a “game” in place that kills off children. Likewise, Zaitseva killed people, and her guards came to protect her even though what she did was morally wrong. Zaitseva is like many of the people in the Capitol; she wears the newest most expensive fashions, has the best food, and lives with the most luxurious technologies available to her. The people who live in the Capitol play a hand in The Hunger Games murders because they do nothing to stop it. The killing does not bother them because they themselves are not being sacrificed. Likewise, Zaitseva ran over people, but she most likely will not be punished for her actions, and it is not even she who pays the monetary compensation. It is her father.
Though at first, The Hunger Games seems outlandish and dystopian, it is not too far from reality. Rich people get away with even taking someone else’s life, or multiple people’s lives, in Alyona’s case, because of money and power.
Bibliography
Parfitt, Moscow Tom. “Oligarch’s Daughter Held after Car Crash in Ukraine Kills Five Pedestrians.” The Times & The Sunday Times, The Times, 19 Oct. 2017, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/oligarchs-daughter-held-after-car-crash-in-ukraine-kills-five-pedestrians-d60fz370m.