Marxism In Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins 's depiction of a dystopian society in the novel The Hunger Games contains numerous references to the social analysis known as Marxism. Marxist theory serves as a point of reference for social, political, and economical reform and influences a number of political theories such as communism and socialism. In his work, Marx analyses class struggle, history, and the faults in capitalism while emphasizing the power provided by collective resistance of the proletariat. The Hunger Games presents the story of Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist barely surviving in a nation still facing the blowback of a failed revolution seventy-four years prior. Katniss feels the government 's wrath when she is forced to enter the Hunger Games, a violent …show more content…
According to the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice, theorists concluded that culture industry and these traditional values help to control the masses, "Louis Althusser argued that dominant social institutions, such as the family and the church, serve as ideological apparatuses that construct the characteristic forms of social subjectivity that are compatible with capitalism" (Anderson and Herr 916). Capitalists keep control by influencing and shaping culture, identity, and consciousness. These so called necessary values are stressed by the media and the government, helping to constrict the working …show more content…
The Capitol uses tesserae, a years supply of oil and bread for one person, as a way to get Hunger Games applicants to enter their names numerous times, a ploy to lure applicants into putting their names into the drawing a number of times for the sake of their families. Applicants like Katniss and Gale have their names placed in the pool numerous extra times for tesserae. Through the duration of The Hunger Games, mandatory participation and viewership of the Games serves as a reminder of what happens when the districts rebel and fail, "To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against each other" (Collins 19). The media frenzy that surrounds the Hunger Games helps to rub the pain of watching kids from every district brutally murder each other into the proletariat class. The Capitol invented the Hunger Games as a grim reminder of the failed revolution and to remind the citizens of the districts that the Capitol holds full power, and may use it as it