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timent, and each story expresses that sentiment in different
ways. Hopefully the ideas we've shared here can help you answer
that question for yourself.
http://www.quora.com/l/boq-tyler-borchers
the hunger games
Does race or ethnicity play a role
in The Hunger Games series? If so,
how?
Monika Kothari, abecedarian
Whether or not Panem is a post-racial society, the United
States in the present — that is, the time, place, and audience
for which Suzanne Collins is writing — is not. It's possible to
write a book in which race is not a major theme, of course, or
for individual readers to dismiss race as an important factor,
but we live in a society that's obsessed with race. Our world is
not post-racial, and in critical analysis, race can't be treated
as irrelevant . . . especially in a bestselling YA series — even
a futuristic science fiction one. So while race doesn't have
to be central to every aspect of our culture, and it's probably
healthier if we don't obsess over it as we do, it will remain an
important issue for as long as racism remains a real problem.
When writing characters, it's almost impossible not to
take race into consideration. even if race is not significant
in Panem, Collins made conscious decisions to make some
characters white (e.g. Peeta), some characters black (e.g.
Rue), and some characters ambiguous (e.g. Katniss). These
racial distinctions can't have been arbitrary choices; no race
is "neutral" even if we've been acculturated to believe that
white is the norm. Why should we assume that a character is
white unless explicitly described otherwise? Unless Rue and
Thresh are just token minorities designed to satisfy the terms
of political correctness in our society, which is a whole other
issue in itself, there must be some logic behind their depiction
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