Reaction Paper to The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

    Catching Fire is the second installment of The Hunger Games Trilogy written by New York Times Bestselling Author, Suzanne Collins. Its film adaptation is indeed a hit, not only in the cinemas but also in our faces. The whole story is not just a plain entertainment and one should not see it as such because it allows us to see our dark selves: where our greed for power will take us, to what extent of violence are we capable of, what is really a game for us, and when will we stop harming others and start realizing that we also harm ourselves when we do such. I personally learned a lot from it, relate from it, since the very first time I opened the pages of the books.

   The movie’s genre is science fiction obviously because of the very high standard of technology featured in it. Many things are so fictionalized like how the gamemakers control the arena, how every horrors and hovercafts materialize suddenly, the bizarre look of the people in the Capitol, the outfits, the very idea of it being set in the ruins of North America and most of all, science is used to destroy people whereas it is used otherwise in the non-fiction world.

    Past, present, and future are involved in the story. Slavery and social classes depict the past, although there is still a hierarchy in the present world. The people in the districts are the slaves and the Capitol gets them to work hard and even die for its benefit. The district people also are the ones who are below the social class pyramid. For the present, the movie shows how people fight their fellows for power and for survival. It shows how much a person can do to get every power he wants, just like the people nowadays who run for positions. Some are going to the extent of buying citizens’ right to choose and of killing everyone who gets into their way. We are in a present day Hunger Games, but still a mild one. The worst is the future which is the movie itself. There, the people are already blinded by power and violence. There, the people are starving, dying. There, everything is artificial. So futuristic, so fictional—but not impossible to happen.

   On a lighter note, science, technology, and society succeeded in the districts by performing their assigned industries. By doing so, they are functioning as one and contributing to one another. Although these failed because with the Capitol leading them, the districts lost their power, became slaves of the Capitol people, and forced to kill one another therefore destroying the foundations of society.

   Let us not make our dark selves darker. We must not get it to the point of killing our neighbors by using natural strength or science. As the creatures that have the highest capacity for thinking, we should not let that happen. We’re better than that.

Keanne Samar, 2013-16445