The Hunger Games

    The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is a young girls story of fighting for her friends, family, and country. The country of Panem, filled with heartache and evil spirits; where twelve districts are created and maintained by the capitol. While the capitol is in control, no one outside it is safe. The capitol is a corrupt city that forces each district to pick one boy and one girl to fight to the death in what is called The Hunger Games once a year. The Hunger Games is where twenty-four young teens (ages 11-18), twelve boys and twelve girls are forced into an arena with only the clothes on their backs and the will to live. While in the arena, each contestant has opportunities to find weapons and food left by the game makers (the people who create the arena) and they must fight to kill. In order to survive, you must be the last out of those twenty-four contestants to live. If a contestant is lucky enough to stay alive, they will live with riches for the rest of their lives.
    The Hunger Games is a way of the capitol keeps all the districts in line and in control. The reason for this “game” is because of the rebellion of the thirteenth district. The capitol destroyed the district and everyone in it, therefore, each year the Hunger Games are displayed for the whole country of Panem to see on large screens to remind them of what happened years and years ago to district thirteen.“Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch – this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion. Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen.”(chapter 1, paragraph 76 of The Hunger Games). As a teen stuck in one of the worst districts of Panem, district twelve, Katniss Everdeen verbalizes what many refuse to say aloud in fear of the capitol; the only reason for the Hunger Games is to show each district how much control they have on everyone and how fast they could be the next one to die.
    Each year Katniss was able to be one of the lucky ones whose name was never chosen. Unfortunately for her, Prim, her eleven year old sister was chosen as a victim in the Hunger Games. Because of Katniss’ love for her younger sister, she sacrifices herself for Prim and enters the Hunger Games.
    She is picked into the Hunger Games with a boy she has known since a young girl, Peta. Peta always secretly loved Katniss but only showed his love and kindness to her as a young boy when he sacrificed a beating from his mother to feed her hungry stomach. The two of them are forced into battle and create a story with their mentors to tell to the whole country of Panem their “love” for each other in hopes of getting sponsors for district twelve. While in the arena, they go their separate ways making alliances with other contestants. Peta, decides to go with the districts that are brutal killers (districts 1-4). Katniss on the other hand chooses an 11 year old girl named Rue from district eleven who reminds her of her young sister Prim. They become best friends until one day, Rue is caught in a fight with a boy who was much bigger than her and dies. Katniss sings to her as she passes the song that always gave her comfort as a child:
     Deep in the meadow, under the willow
     A bed of grass, a soft green pillow
     Lay down your head, and close your eyes
     And when they open, the sun will rise
     Here it’s safe, and here it’s warm
     Here the daisies guard you from every harm
     Here your dreams are sweet–
     –and tomorrow brings them true
     Here is the place where I love you.
     Deep in the meadow, hidden far away
     A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray
     Forget your woes and let your troubles lay
     And when again it’s morning, they’ll wash away
     Here it’s safe, and here it’s warm
     Here the daisies guard you from every harm
     Here your dreams are sweet–
     – and tomorrow brings them true
     Here is the place where I love you.
     Here is the place where I love you.
After Rue passes, she then picks flowers and decorates Rue’s hair in them creating a crown of flowers on her head which is an extreme insult to the capitol. Katniss however doesn’t care. She wants to beat the odds and win the Games. Not just for her family but for Rue and all the other young children who were killed while in the arena.

    Katniss continues to fight and eventually finds Peta. They continue their “love” for one another (while Peta doesn’t pretend and Katniss begins to really grow feelings) and they make it to the final three knowing one of them must die. After the last contestant besides Peta and Katniss dies, they have no choice but to decide who will die because there can only be one winner. Neither of them will let the other die, which is why they decide to poison themselves and die together, leaving the capitol with no victor and embarrassment to the President of Panem; for they bent the rules. However, before they can kill themselves, the capitol allows both to live. Leaving this thought in everyone’s heads, Love is surely much greater than death, for love is the reason many die, to save one another, just as Katniss and Peta did.

To be Afraid or Not to be Afraid

    Is it possible to ever be secure and escape from death? Death is inevitable, it will never be possible for a human being or any life matter in fact, that can live forever. Although we can not be safe from death however, we can feel piece of mind with death and be okay with the fact that someday, somehow, we will die. When people think of death they get scared. This is mostly because they see death as if it is always murder. Death does not always have to be murder. It can come as a peaceful and happy thing and not always scary and a violent death. Not everyone dies from murder or a scary death. In some way, I hope people can take comfort in knowing that “on the night we die a thousand others go with us, among them wise men and fools and such low forms of life as shepherds or maidservants”(Oxford Book of Death pg 21).
    We may begin to fear death as time goes on and we get older and older, fall in LOVE, and begin to start a family with children. Death can be a scary thing, but it can also be something that creates us to live life as though it was our last day, for we do not know the day we will die. Those who decide to look over death as though it is not there, cannot fully live their lives because they will not accept the fact that someday their life will come to an end leaving everything behind. “He who pretends to look on death with out fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, with out which the entire human species would soon be destroyed” (Jean Jacques Rousseau). Everyone dies, and everyone is afraid of death at one point. Hopefully, someday, everyone is able to not fear death, but live life without any fear. With fear in life, there is no way a person can be truly happy.
    Of course it is scary to think that someday I will be burned to ashes or sewed up and glued together so my family can say one last goodbye to me only to watch me go six feet underground in a coffin nailed shut never to be opened again. However, I recognize death as it is. It is death whether I believe in an afterlife or not. Fortunately for myself, I do have faith and I have my own beliefs in what will happen to me once I die. For those people who want to live forever, why would you want to live past all your friends and family. There will be so much heartache and sadness in that persons life with all of those deaths there will be no point in living life after so much death.
    In Hinduism, the Hindu’s look at life and death with happiness. They have no fear in death and accept what is a part of every life. In India, death is everywhere. Dead bodies lay in the rivers and streets in every ones way. There is no way they can escape death and it is known by even the youngest children. It seems to be that Hinduism and Christianity have some of the same stories or beliefs. One story would be the story of Nachiketas and Yama. This story is very similar to the story of Isaac and Abraham where the son has accepted the fact that their father needs a sacrifice to be given up but with no lambs/ young calf.
    With Hinduism, comes different beliefs. Reincarnation is something that is not taken lightly within the religion. They believe that once a person dies, they come back to life either in another human form or some other kind of living creature on the Earth. Death is something that cannot be taken lightly whether you believe you will come back to life or live in some sort of after life.

Thoughts on Death as a Sacred Art

February 3, 2011

Death is something that is a part of life and life is a part of death. Each needs each other for without life there is no death. There is a beginning to every end, beginning to a sentence, beginning to life and with each comes an ending which is ultimately death. Life always leads to death and we are constantly going towards our endings. It is even said in Shakespeares play Hamlet that death cannot be overcome. "All that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity." (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2). Discovering life in death and death in life is an important aspect for every person to unravel. It may be an overwhelming realization or even something that comes with time.

It took death to bring Betty Maltz back to life. Essentially the woman who was pronounced dead and then reborn believes her old life was meant to die so that the knew Betty could be born in order to leave the old life behind for good. Many people die a physical death only to waken up from the dead to be reborn with a new sense of life as their old life is gone or dead and a new life is born.

With three different faces of death, physical, psychological, and spiritual, it shows how much death is a part of ones life. The physical part of death is the loss of a heartbeat, brain activity, and breath. A psychological death is something that one does when they begin to live as if they have already died. It seems to happen mostly to depressed beings and those who just feel as though they can’t take any more of life’s challenges. With a spiritual death, old patterns, habits, and identities are wiped away and the birth of a new person becomes a realization. Betty Maltz had a spiritual and physical death when she died and it was pronounced by doctors and then had a spiritual death when she awakened and realized what there is in the afterlife.

Death is something that seems to be feared by many. However to some death is not anything to be scared of at all. This is mostly with those who have faith in an afterlife that is better than anything that could be on this Earth. Those who are in American culture fear death and what lies in the afterlife because it is the unknown and most people need proof to understand what is really the truth. Many people need to die in order to realize what they want in life and how they decide to live life. It takes someone’s death sentence for them to live their life as they have always wanted to. They realize that death is imminent and they accept their fate and death as it is. There is no point in fearing death because it will happen no matter what. There is nothing anyone can do in order to cheat death. Those who already know they are dying become peaceful when death arrives and then, instead of feeling sorry for themselves, they begin to feel sorry for their friends and family instead of them for their family are the ones who must live without them.