Henthorne, Tom. Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis
2014; Volume: 25; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0897-0521
Autores Tópico(s)Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
ResumoHenthorne, Tom. Approaching The Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 200 pp. Paperback. ISBN: 978-0786468645. $40.00. Pharr, Mary F. and Leisa A. Clark. Of Bread, Blood, and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012. 246 pp. Paperback. ISBN: 978-0786470198. $40.00. As popular excitement extends ever more rapidly to scholarly curiosity, the recent explosion of interest in young adult literature is no longer limited to the production of big-budget movies and record sales of associated merchandise. With many extant essay collections focused on Twilight (2005-2008) and Harry Potter (1997-2007), it is no wonder that Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games (2008-2010) trilogy now receives similar attention, and two recent books take on that task. Tom Henthorne's Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy: A Literary and Cultural Analysis provides a single author's multifaceted take on the three novels, while Mary F. Pharr and Leisa A. Clark's Of Bread, Blood and The Hunger Games: Critical Essays on the Suzanne Collins Trilogy collects a variety of essays from professors, graduate students, and writers, each bringing their own approach to the texts. Though significant overlap exists between the two books' approaches and both would benefit from additional explanation and expansion of their claims, Pharr and Clark's larger volume of collected essays effectively discusses the trilogy from multiple perspectives while Henthorne's tighter configuration surprisingly produces a more fragmentary experience. After its preface and introductory materials, Approaching the Hunger Games Trilogy opens with a brief biography of Suzanne Collins and a discussion of the novels' creation, distribution, and reception, establishing interest in the impact of Collins's life on her books. Though this biographical attention recurs periodically, a media studies approach dominates the remainder of the book, with its first chapter, Make of It What You Will, approaching the novels as part of the young adult literature phenomenon, and its eighth and final chapter, Make of It What You Will (Remix), discussing the books as a digital (Henthorne 139). Between these bookends, Henthorne explores a variety of subjects, including transgressive gender presentations in chapter two, war stories and activism in chapter three, pragmatist ethics in chapter four, a return to media studies in chapter five's treatment of reality television, and a discussion of dystopian themes and survivor narratives in chapters six and seven, respectively. The book concludes with three appendices: two providing glossaries for terms and characters in the Hunger Games trilogy and a third offering questions for further study to readers of the trilogy, Collins's previous books, and the recently released film. The inclusion of study questions and the scope of topics under consideration suggest that the text might serve as an introduction to literary studies for trilogy readers unfamiliar with such approaches, and the casual style of Henthorne's prose confirms this. However, the text's short length forces foreshortened exploration of each theory or perspective, impacting the quality of engagement. Each chapter begins with an explanation of a particular concept and then relates it to the Hunger Games trilogy. Nearly every chapter effectively introduces its concepts with clever descriptions of the theoretical concept before exploring its role in the text. For example, in his chapter two discussion of gender roles, Henthorne informs the reader that [understood in this way, it is easy to see how gender identities can be destabilized and subverted when they are performed in ways other than those prescribed by society (46), invoking Judith Butler efficiently. He builds on this base to make some very interesting claims about Collins's novels, in particular noting that during Katniss's rise as a tribute, quickly learns that performing traditional forms of femininity is essential to her survival, and so she cooperates with Cinna and his team . …
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