After The Hunger Games trilogy finished off in 2010, it left a vacuum in the world of Young Adult fiction. Previously swamped with romances and fantasy (or sometimes a combination of the two) The Hunger Games had completely changed the game. Never before had the modern YA market— which had only really started in earnest after the immense popularity of the Harry Potter series— seen something so overtly, violently dystopian. Although it might be hard to imagine now that the market seems to be perpetually swamped with them, I would argue that The Hunger Games was the first actively popular distinctly Young Adult dystopian novel. (Yes, Uglies and The Giver exist, but Uglies wasn’t that popular and The Giver isn’t treated as YA). The Hunger Games changed everything. Teens were suddenly roiling for dystopian fiction, and more importantly willing to spend a lot of money on it. Suddenly you couldn’t get away from YA dystopia: The Maze Runner, Divergent, and Matched became wildly popular, among others. But they all lacked something crucial— purpose.
Now that we’ve all had time to reflect on the trilogy ten years after it’s finished, it has become abundantly clear that what made The Hunger Games special was the social commentary, not necessarily the dystopian world that it occupied. Of course, an argument could be made that they are one and the same, but to be honest I feel that one could easily write a version of The Hunger Games that isn’t half as critical or profound— as evidenced by the dozens of dystopian YA books that followed The Hunger Games’ success, that frankly were not as good.
The thing about The Hunger Games that always surprises me on a reread is how simply it’s written. Very clear sentence structure, very clear wording, very clear language. Which isn’t to say it’s not good— it’s very good. It’s emotionally gripping from the get-go. But it’s not necessarily what we would consider “good writing.” I don’t sit agonizing over language from The Hunger Games the way I might do over something by Shakespeare or Hardy. I think what this tells me, regardless of whether this is an indication of Collins’ skill (I don’t think it is) or whether it’s an intentional style that she chose (I think this is true) is that this book has a very pointed message. There’s no need to use flowery words or complicated sentence structure, because that would distract us from the message of the book. The critiques of race, class, consumerism, manipulative media, ignorance and apathy, dictatorship and tyranny, violence, and so much more are very in your face. Think of any social ill that plagues our society today, and I can almost guarantee there is at least a passage in The Hunger Games that directly comments on and critiques that social ill, if not literal pages on the subject. And it's so overt, in part because of the language Collins uses. Unfortunately, we as a culture seemed to miss 90% of this criticism anyways, perhaps because the action elements of the story were too flashy and distracting, or maybe because looking into a mirror of our society that airs all our dirty laundry makes us so immensely uncomfortable we have to focus on something else.
I bring this up only because I think we have it stuck in our minds that complicated writing = a complicated message, when this is not true at all. In fact, what I have often found (at least in Young Adult literature) is that complicated writing = a confused message, or a distraction from the message. This is why I love Romance period literature, because similarly to The Hunger Games, it doesn’t make you guess at what it’s trying to say. It’s quite overt. The language may be flowery, but it is not complicated (at least by the standards of the time in which it was written). And while some literature leaves the message intentionally vague (I am staring directly at the Gothic genre) this is not, I think, what most YA lit is trying to do. So while some other dystopian YA books may have more complex writing styles, don’t let this fool you into thinking this means their messages must be equally complicated. They are not. I also think this is important because it shows intention. Even if this was not an intentional style as I have suggested, and just reflects Collins’ “skill” as an author, it still shows that the reason she wrote these books was to make a point. Why else would someone who is not “talented” at writing labor so intensively on a project? And why else would it work so well?
In short, The Hunger Games is almost essay-like in its critique, using very generic structures and symbols to represent elements in our own society. Everything in the books is an allegory, and nothing exists without purpose. Even the love triangle aspect of The Hunger Games has metaphorical meaning. Katniss isn’t really choosing between Peeta and Gale. She’s choosing between the establishment and uncertainty, between violence and peace, between destruction and rebirth. Her “choosing” Peeta over Gale has huge moral implications, as it’s an endorsement of all the things Peeta embodies and a rejection of all the things Gale represents. It’s infuriating that this complex moral issue has been boiled down to a choice between two different hair colors. The mistake people make is in thinking that what made The Hunger Games good or popular were these extremely shallow elements, rather than what they represented.
Which leads me to where we are now— or rather, where we were the couple of years after The Hunger Games wrapped up and dystopian YA novels were getting published left and right. While The Hunger Games craze has died down over the years since the movies finished off, the series remains one of the most well known of the genre. Meanwhile other YA dystopian novels totally lack staying power in the cultural consciousness, in part, I think, because they lacked the social commentary that dystopian fiction needs to be successful. They focused too heavily on elements of The Hunger Games that were symbolically significant, but generally insignificant absent of the context that created the social critique, while offering no critique of their own.
I find Divergent to be the most egregious offender of this phenomenon; infuriatingly, because it somehow managed to get wildly popular despite being (in my own opinion) one of the worst young adult novels to come out in the last decade. Divergent presents a completely formulaic approach to dystopia. It “borrowed” the faction system from The Hunger Games’ Districts, the “dystopian” setting, and its defiant young female hero, but failed to transfer any of the messaging these systems and characters carried in the original books. The districts in the hunger games represented the impoverished, working class that was being oppressed, manipulated, and controlled by the ruling class. The dystopian setting was truly dystopian, as it had a violent government, violent law enforcement, extreme surveillance, and the games themselves. Katniss is a morally complex representation of the rebellion of the working class. Meanwhile, the factions in Divergent don’t mean anything in relation to each other; they totally lack the class conflict of the Districts in Hunger Games. The world is dystopian because everyone has been programmed to only focus on one character trait— I mean, call me crazy, but I don’t think this holds a candle to all the f***ed up stuff going on in Panem that I just described, especially because this is later revealed to not be super problematic at the end of the last book. I mean, sure the society is kind of weird, and there are some unsavory elements, like everyone in one faction being totally cooked out on drugs, but it doesn’t feel dystopian in the same way because none of this means anything in a real world context. And Tris is one of the blandest protagonists in the YA genre, who represents no oppressed real world group. Divergent as a whole is noticeably absent of any sort of critical messaging, except for some vague christian themes, a very shallow jab at authoritarianism, and an oddly specific and equally vague critique of genetic manipulation.
Now, I’m not saying that every story has to have a distinct meaning or message or societal critique. I don’t believe that at all. I personally like for my books to have a deeper meaning, but I understand it’s not required. However, when one chooses to use a dystopian society to present one’s story, I become slightly judgemental when this is not the case, seeing as the genre was created precisely for the purpose of societal critique. Like, I understand the need for a fun mindless action romp every once in a while, but A) Divergent really acts like it has something to say, but B) really does not. Frankly even their vague genetics criticism does not have enough conflict to fill three books. Short stories have done better jobs handling that particular subject, nobody needed three books telling us in a very loose way that genetic manipulation is bad, especially when it's honestly not even that convincing. Divergent also has an extremely rough take on authoritarianism, which can basically be boiled down to “authoritarianism bad.” (No, I’m not giving it the dignity of a complete sentence, it doesn't deserve it). Meanwhile The Hunger Games manages to have a far superior critique of BOTH of these topics, even though genetics isn’t even one of the top ten things it critiques! It just makes Divergent seem contrived just to fill the monetary void that The Hunger Games left when it wrapped up the series. Which may or may not have been the case, but it's hard to ignore the glaring similarities between the two books, and the fact that one of them is good and the other is not. Divergent spent a lot of time developing its specific world, but forgot to make it mean anything important.
Divergent isn’t the only book that follows The Hunger Games formula. Dystopian novels with a female hero and a love triangle between a blonde and a brunette were far too common in the early 2010s. Matched by Ally Condie falls into this trap, though it’s not as overtly Hunger Games-y as Divergent, and has a slightly deeper critique of authoritarianism (one could say Condie’s critique boils down to “authoritarianism is bad”— see, she got a full sentence, that’s how much better it is). And while I don’t find Matched to be a very engaging text, it at least has some interesting worldbuilding. Selection by Kiera Cass also plays into this dystopian love triangle romance trope a lot, but Cass seemed less interested in knocking off The Hunger Games and more interested in knocking off The Bachelor, which to be honest I have to kind of respect. She at least made an attempt at class critique, though “attempt” is the operative word, as it’s the messiest social commentary I’ve ever seen. However, I don’t even really think that was her intention when she was writing the book, so I’m barely even mad.
I’m not really mad at any of these authors, to be honest. I’m more annoyed about the systems that chose to publish these books, perhaps suggested edits to make them more like The Hunger Games (I have no proof of this, but I can’t help but think it’s a funny “coincidence” how similar some elements are, especially when they seem very shoehorned in there) and marketed the books as if they were “the next Hunger Games!” when in fact they were nothing more than fluffy romances or generic action thrillers with a slightly sinister setting. The Hunger Games is in a class by itself, and every book that attempts to copy it in any way inevitably falls flat, because they’re copying the wrong things.
No matter what any marketing executive tries to tell you, there hasn’t been a book like The Hunger Games since The Hunger Games— and I doubt there will be a book like The Hunger Games until Suzanne Collins releases her Hunger Games prequel, A Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes. If anyone tells you any different, they’re trying to sell you something. And rest assured, it won’t be as good.
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