Katherine Abarca, Westminster College
Social and Behavioral Sciences
The Hunger Games series has sold 50 million copies of the three books as of July 2012, has an impressive fandom, and has significant influence on popular culture. One of the many reasons for the success of the series is that its shocking story is set in a society eerily similar to the United States. The fictional country of Panem and its similarities to the United has caused it to gain interest in academia. Utilizing textual analysis, I examine how the fictional country of Panem is similar to present day United States in its inequality between classes and use of mechanisms of control. I also discuss how this cultural artifact affects our understanding of our society and how our society is reflected in the books. This research will expand the limited academic literature analyzing the Hunger Games. In addition, this research will focus on the different mechanisms of control in how they maintain inequalities between classes rather than stopping at analyzing the mechanisms themselves.