Here you have a comparative essay between The Hunger Games and Ender's Game. Hope you like it.
I'm such a freak, I know.
Love.
Childhood in a post-apocalyptic world
Growing up in the
normal world is already a hard task, but doing it with a post-apocalyptic
background just stinks. The apocalypse changes people, that’s unavoidable; when
there’s nothing left but a bunch of ruins and the survivors have to work harder
than ever to live one more day in a hostile environment, the good old uses that
we used to know have nothing to do there anymore. Grown-ups can stand it, but
children are usually a collateral damage. Suddenly, they find themselves lost
in a completely new world where they might not even have parents to take care
of them, and they have to get used to it quickly if they want to survive. Even
if they still have a family and a place to live in, they just have to accept
that times have changed and it’s rarely for good.
Ender’s game and The hunger
games display very different points of view of what childhood in a
post-apocalyptic world can be, but they share a common topic: how to exploit
one of the most prolific resources they have, childhood. Children imply
innocence, creativity, energy, but also a weak spot in society, something that,
by instinct, must be protected by adults. In both novels we can see how the
powerful and important people use all of this as a means to an end.
In both novels there’s
been a war, but the worlds are different: Ender lives in an intergalactic world
where the humans have defeated twice, with a great effort, an alien race that
they barely understand; on the other hand, Katniss lives in a devastated but
not so-far-from-us North America where there has been a civil war among humans
that has ended up by dividing the territory in twelve districts ruled by the
main city, the Capitol, where the winners live their rich and wonderful lives,
without minding the poverty and misery that prevail in the districts.
Obviously, these two
different depictions of the end of a war set two completely different worlds to
live in and, of course, children are not seen the same way. Once we’ve spent a
few pages with Ender and Katniss, we can see that their lives are totally
different, but by the end of the books we may establish some coincidences
between them. Ender is a genius, he is extraordinary and that’s what will drive
him to the top, his life is also way better in most of the senses: he has a
family, he studies, he has fun in his own way, his life is way more normal than
Katniss’. She is a normal girl (given the circumstances) who lives her own
day-a-day war: her father has died, so she has to hunt to feed her mother and little
sister, which is actually illegal, and doesn’t attend school anymore. There’s
nothing remarkable in her, she’s just a survivor, as many others around her
(her best friend also hunts to feed his family, so we can see that not even
this is extraordinary).
For both characters
there’s a turning point: Ender leaves to go to a special school where he will
be trained for war, to keep on defending the Earth from possible alien
invasions, and it’s there where he will show all his potential and how talented
he is, which will mean success and, consequently, his innocence and childish
spirit will be taken from him little by little. By the end of the book, we’ll
see that there’s nothing left of that kid that got into the academy in the
beginning. In The hunger games, Katniss
is already 16, which means that she has been sorted to take part in The Hunger
Games for the last four years, but now her sister is chosen and, to save her,
she will volunteer to do exactly the thing that has been scaring her and every
kid around since they turned twelve. We can see that, while this turning point
means something good for Ender, at least partly because he will have the chance
to learn and develop his extraordinary skills and intelligence, for Katniss it
is almost a death sentence, but she faces it with determination just to protect
her family. In both cases, even though they are way too different, we witness
how these two characters grow up, leaving childhood behind, and this is another
important spot: how circumstances force the children to mature faster and
earlier than we do nowadays.
Besides this, we can
see what childhood actually means for people: in Ender’s game, children are possible future soldiers and strategists
that might help defending the planet from the evil creatures outside and this
is taken so far that they even stop caring about children’s humanity anymore.
Thanks to their imagination, intelligence and non-corrupted-yet minds, they are
powerful foes for the possible invaders, because kids don’t think the same way
adults do. It’s true that the Government takes them away from their families,
but at least they receive some kind of instruction, although they are sent to
the battle afterwards, they are not completely defenseless; also, the reason
why the kids are brought away from their homes is sold as reasonable: they are
getting prepared to fight for their world, their people. In The hunger games, children are seen as a
tool, a way to manipulate the people and remind them that the Government has
the power and the control so far that they can even take their daughters and
sons to death just to entertain the population. By the end of the book, Katniss
is considered as a threaten by the Government and a revolutionary sign by the
people, and this is will rule her life from now on, she will be the sign of
revolution. These points of view may seem different at first, but actually
everything can be reduced to how children are seen only as a weapon, as much
for war as for peace.
Besides this, we can
also check another important thing: the training. As I said before, Ender and
his mates are trained, taught and instructed, they are not just sent to fight
without any weapon. If some kids prove to be extraordinary in any sense, as
Ender is, their skills are developed and admired, people can see something good
in them. In Katniss’ world they don’t; she proves to be a great archer, but the
only way she had to train was illegal and neither the Capitolium nor the peace
agents that are supposed to keep the peace in the districts would have seen
anything good in that. Indeed it is considered as dangerous, because she’s able
to defend herself from attackers and that gives her some kind of power. When
she arrives to the Games and proves to be an excellent hunter, people are
amazed, but not the organizers nor the watchers: they turn to be worried,
because she has obviously learnt on her own and, since she comes from a poor
district, she might turn out to be a problem.
Some quotes in the
books can also help us to understand the kind of moral and mentality people
have. On one hand, we have the famous “Sometimes lies are more dependable than
the truth” (Ender’s game), which I
think it’s very illustrative; it makes us think about a society so corrupted in
certain ways that the truth might mean nothing, so it’s not a surprise that
kids are used as potential weapons in a war. Ender doesn’t trust anybody and
adults, and especially teachers, are just a bunch of liars. It also submits the
idea of how easy it is sometimes to find out the truth just by the contrary
meaning of the lie (as when adults say “It won’t hurt” and you know perfectly
well by it that it will). On the other hand, we have the repeated “And may the
odds be ever in your favor” (The Hunger
Games), which I find quite ironic if not irritating; this is the Hunger
Games slogan, so to say, and every time children are selected to take part in
the Games, this is the common thing to say; I think this is really ironic,
because as they are “wishing” luck to the participants, what they are really
looking forward to is a blood bath, and we can witness Katniss and some of her
friends using it in a mocking way sometimes.
Can we see some
similarity between books and reality? Yes, we can, but we have to go a few
hundreds years back in time. The way kids are trained and sent to the
battlefield might be compared to the Ancient Greek and how Spartans raised
their children:
In
ancient Sparta
The
Spartan system of education was organized by the state and each boy was
assigned to a group known as the agela. They lived in a communal style and were
made to undergo a curriculum of training that was rigorous and often painful.
Enormous discipline was placed on these children as they passed through the
hands of teachers, gymnastic coaches and military instructors. The goal of this
program was to produce men who were not only physically fit but psychologically
disciplined. The Spartan male's education did not end till he reached the age
of thirty. In this educational regime, literacy and the arts were not a
priority.[1]
We can also compare The Hunger Games system to the Ancient
Rome and their ways of entertainment. Even the name of the space where the
competition takes places is the same, arena,
and everybody could attend it and watch. Children were taken there to
witness the spectacle, not caring that it was extremely violent, and children
that remain at home are compelled to watch THG on television as everyone else.
Besides, kids are sent to fight as if they were war prisoners (aren’t they in
fact?), anything can be sent by the watchers to attack them and make the show
more interesting for people, and there’s a great variety of weapons set in the
arena for them to use it besides the natural resources the participants can
find in their displayed environment:
The
majority of gladiators was either condemned criminals, slaves, prisoners of war
or volunteers who signed up to do shows for a fee (…).
Various
other weapons, women, and sometimes even dwarves were used in the games. Special
types of "wild animal matches" (venationes) were
introduced in the 2nd Century BC and became very popular. Such bouts included
men on foot and on horseback, known as beastiarii, who were usually either criminals, prisoners of war, or trained and
paid fighters. Beastiarii fought
exotic animals, which eventually led to an extensive trade market.[2]
All this factors have
repercussions in the way Ender and Katniss understand their lives.
In the beginning, we
see that Ender is a very cultured person; he and his sister spend their time
thinking about questions that not even the adults have in their minds and they
start a philosophic revolution by exposing their conclusions where people can
read and discuss them. It’s obvious, then, that, although they are kids, they
already have some kind of maturity, a different way of seeing things and, of
course, enough courage to put them to the test. Ender develops his skills in order
to help his planet, but there’s a consequence that nobody has expected,
although it could have been predictable just by checking his personal
character, and that he explains it quite well in one quote: In the moment when I truly understand my
enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I
also love him. Those who trained him to turn him into a very effective
weapon didn’t count on that and this is what will help Ender to keep his
humanity. His newly evolved compassion will be a very important factor for the
rest of his life and will change things that weren’t meant to change. His
sensibility will help him understand a lot more about his mission or how to
accomplish it in a different way than expected.
Katniss evolution is a bit
different. She’s introduced as an orphan fighter in the day-a-day. She has no
time to philosophize about life nor war, she takes care of her family and silently
begs for not being chosen to die in the Games (nor any of her beloved ones);
actually, the only big thought that she transmits is how bad and cruel the
Games are. However, by the time her sister is selected she volunteers, which
shows us that she is not a kid anymore (at least not completely), because she
has already developed that instinct grown-ups have about protecting the younger
ones beyond the instinctive fear of dying. Although she tries to look tough and
strong, along the story she shows a big compassion and even some kind of
maternal instinct (anyway, she says she will never have children so she won’t
have to put them through the annual torture of the Games her generation has to
face), not just with humans but also with the animals she hunts (at some point,
she says that she prefers to kill them quickly). But by the end of the Games,
her toughness has started to become real; killing, almost being killed, seeing
people dying and knowing that she will never be able to have a normal in-love
relationship make her turn into an adult suffocated by responsibilities. That
toughness she develops will be necessary and important in the next books, when
she will become the face of the revolution and have to face a real war.
I think we can conclude
that Ender and Katniss live in quite diverse worlds but represent not so
different perspectives. What they really show us is that it doesn’t matter how
sick the environment can be around us as long as we know who we want to be; you
might be forced to fight and kill, but you have to understand why and at some
point, as Peeta says to Katniss before the Games start, Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to... to show the Capitol
they don't own me. That I'm more than just a piece in their Games. The
evolution from children to adults, their relationships and thoughts in these
concrete post-apocalyptic situations help us by exploring parts of human
behavior that would be taboo in any other circumstances. It’s evident that
kids, their minds and lives, are the best weapons society can have, and that an
event like the apocalypse can distort our ethics about it, but are these kinds
of approaches a warning for the future
or a way to put the present to the test? In my opinion, authors always try to
tell us more about the present than the future, so maybe we should start
questioning ourselves.
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