Changing the Odds

       The themes of The Hunger Games are universal ones. Suzanne Collins explores everything from oppression to suffering as a form of pleasure. With subtly, Collins’s visual rhetoric sends a forewarning to her readers about the possibilities of what our future holds. A common motif evolving within the novel was the image of appearance. Collin’s detailed imagery painted a picture of Katniss’s world, the world within the Capital, as well as the world of the Hunger Games. Each distinct world was particularly detailed to draw one common argument blatantly suggesting the presence of social class. Although the district is described with “black cinder streets”, for the working class and lacking everyday needs, in contract, the Capital is described as “glistening”, “bright”, full of people who looked as if they “have never missed a meal” The obvious contrast forces the readers to recognize the presence of social class, but even more, the inequality between the rich and the poor.
   
    Collins description of District 12 illustrates Katiniss’s state of poverty. From the beginning, District 12 is portrayed as a place of the working class, with the “men and women with hunched shoulders” and “swollen knuckles”. With houses described as “gray” and black dusty roads, Collins paints a clear image of the Seam of District 12 as the working class. Although a hard-working cohort, the remains impoverished, as Katniss suggests their luck to get two or three hours of electricity. Katniss’s social class is articulated as she tells of the district’s lack of food and starvation as doom for many in the district. Katniss has become accustomed to the lifestyle and is astonished by the contrast she is met with when she enters the Capital. Katniss sees the “glistening buildings”, “shiny cars”, as well as all of the “artificial” colors of the people and the Capitol. Collins depicts a clear contrast in order to draw the line between classes in The Hunger Games. The dark imagery of District 12 connotes the deprived and the unfortunate, while the bright imagery of the Capital connotes the wealthy and the privileged. Such images, such as of starvation, signify poverty, while images of cars are signifiers for wealth. Quite simply, the contrast of such signifiers in The Hunger Games creates a theme of social class and the disparity between classes.
                             VS.
                                           Collin’s contrast imagery forces the readers to recognize the existence of social class within the novel. 

    As readers, we are able to recognize the social classes because of what we have seen and learned. As our body’s act as a form of memory, what we’ve seen and experience become what we know and human culture. In the case of The Hunger Games, our experiences with social class that we live in makes the class system in the novel easily recognized. Such ways become set into our culture and become “universal and timeless” ways in our lives, as Hebdige explains. Class systems have been a part of mankind for all of history. The concept has been around in our societies, created dominant social group who first had complete authority, exemplifying a hegemonic situation, as Hedbige points out. The institution in complete authority in The Hunger Games is the Capitol. As history repeats itself and is constantly “retraced” in the “map of meaning”, as Stuart Hall suggests, social class becomes an everyday concept and the habitus of the human race. As an end result, recognizing social class based on the imagery as signification in The Hunger Games becomes effortless for us readers. 

    Ultimately, the visual rhetoric not only brings to surface the concept of social class for us readers, but it creates an argument about the dangerous possibilities that classification, in the wrong combination, may hold. Stuart Hall argues that classification is a part of our culture and it harmless until combined with power. Collin’s argument suggests a fear similar to that of Hall, who goes on to describe his fear of classification combined with power. This worry comes to life in extremes in The Hunger Games, seen, as the districts are impoverished, but the puppets and pawns of entertainment for the Capitol. Hall describes this as troublesome because it creates an opportunity for the lines of classification to cause reason for inequality. As seen in The Hunger Games, the line of classification between the Capitol and the districts causes a disparity in resources and even rights. The Capital is dominant over the district and because of the dominance, as Hall suggests, the Capitol is able to maintain order of the district. Collin displays Hall’s idea of the danger of power alongside classification through The Hunger Games, as tributes and districts are continuously oppressed and unequal. Although Hall suggests classification is normal and is a example of the “common sense code”, Collin’s novel forewarns that power combined with a class system is a recipe for danger, as Stuart Hall would also agree. Eventually, the visual rhetoric depicts social class at its worst in The Hunger Games cautioning about the threat of classification merged with authority, as the habitus of ‘classification’ is constantly ‘retraced’ in our culture and history. Collin’s argument attempts to inform us of how dangerous the threat can be and how it can lead to devastating results that will solidify inequality in social classes and forever oppress the oppressed.

 In all, it suggests that the odds will forever be in the favor of the dominant class.