'The Hunger Games' Is a Civics Lesson

'The Hunger Games' Is a Civics Lesson

 

The best parable of totalitarianism since Orwell's 'Animal Farm.'

By Robert Pondiscio in the Wall Street Journal

The producers at Lions Gate Entertainment LGF in Your Value Your Change Short position aren't the only ones who should be celebrating the $110 million, five-day Thanksgiving box-office record set by "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." The movie's popularity is good news for civics educators. Not only can Katniss Everdeen, the "Hunger Games" heroine, take on the totalitarians ruling her fictional homeland—she also has the power to get kids thinking about citizenship, government power, civil liberties and the influence of the media.

Parents and teachers have a love-hate relationship with "The Hunger Games," novelist Suzanne Collins's dystopian trilogy set in a post-revolutionary America called Panem. Each year in Panem, young people—one boy and one girl from each of country's 12 districts—are forced to fight each other to the death to appease their distant rulers in the Capitol. The dark trilogy—"The Hunger Games," "Catching Fire" and "Mockingjay"—has been decried by some parents and educators as inappropriate for readers younger than high-school age.

Yet like the "Harry Potter" books, "The Hunger Games" is one of those rare series that motivates even the most reluctant young readers. In the case of Ms. Collins's novels, they also provide an opportunity to educate kids about the relationship between the individual and the state, personal rights and responsibilities, and the civic duties expected of citizens. These ideas drive the "Hunger Games" plot, even if the average 13-year-old might not realize it at first. Intentionally or not, the trilogy amounts to the best civics textbook since George Orwell's "Animal Farm."

At the most basic level, the series can help students understand various forms of government. The unchecked totalitarian power of Panem's Capitol can help students appreciate the limited power given to the U.S. government under the Constitution. By contrasting the civil liberties that Americans take for granted with such freedoms' complete absence in District 12, where Katniss lives, students can begin to understand why we so highly value our rights and democratic institutions.

The books also invite exploration of the literary precedents and historical examples that inspired Ms. Collins. How many students know the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, which inspired these novels? Life in the Capitol begs to be compared with the excesses of ancient Rome and its gladiators. This historical analogy was clearly in the mind of the book's author: Panem, after all, is the Latin word for bread. Panem and circuses, anyone?

Katniss embodies many of the civic virtues that schools seek to instill. She is independent, resourceful, brave and willing to sacrifice for others. More sophisticated students might argue about whether Katniss would feel more comfortable with the tea party or the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Is she an Ayn Randian individualist, committed above all to her family and personal liberty? Or is "The Hunger Games" a cautionary tale of income inequality, with the 99% rising up against a heedless, imperialistic elite? Students will surely come down on both sides of this debate.

The role of the media is a dominant theme in the books. Entertainment is central to pacifying the populace, but in the restive outlying districts, information is tightly controlled and dissent is punished with public floggings and executions. Students might consider why censorship is often the weapon of choice for tyrants.

Panem's state-run media are a propaganda tool, yet teenagers are certain to recognize the conventions of reality TV and the contemporary fascination with glamor and celebrity—all of which make the televised spectacle of "The Hunger Games" a little too familiar for comfort.

Parents of today's school-age children grew up during the Cold War, with Soviet gulags, Mao's Cultural Revolution and Cambodia's killing fields serving as lessons in the evil of unchecked government power. For children now, these are abstractions. In the hands of a skillful teacher, "The Hunger Games" makes these not-too-distant events more immediate. Even the story of America's founding might be seen in sharper relief if students compare it with the revolution that Katniss inspires.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," according to Katniss—no, wait, that was Thomas Jefferson. But "The Hunger Games" has its own tree that comes to symbolize freedom: At a pivotal moment in "Catching Fire," when lightning strikes the tree, the supercharge travels down a wire to an arrow that Katniss sends skyward—a move that sparks the fictional revolution that every kid in America is talking about.

Mr. Pondiscio, a former fifth-grade teacher in New York's South Bronx, is executive director of CitizenshipFirst, a Harlem-based civic-education advocacy organization.