Books "The Hunger Games" and "Oryx and Crake"

Throughout this semester, we have read many novels that are classified under the dystopian genre. A favorite of mine is Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake.” This book starts off very confusing and it takes awhile to connect with the book.

In the beginning, I wasn’t able to understand what was happening with the storyline, especially who Jimmy/Snowman was, but once getting into the book it became very interesting. You could tell right off that something was off with the society and after continuing to read it became more scary and uncomfortable, similar to another book we read during this course; “The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins.

In The Hunger Games, the main protagonist is Katniss Everdeen and she is living in a futuristic version of today’s North America. This new society is called Panem and is divided into 12 districts and the Capitol, which rules over the districts. The Capitol is the leader and contains the power to control everyone and keep the citizens afraid in order to keep control.

Each year there is an annual event held where two tributes (one male and one female) from each district is randomly chosen to participate in the Hunger Games. Although the two novels concepts and storylines are completely different, there are similar themes that overlap. Both of these books are post-apocalyptic novels set in the undetermined future. The societies in both are very different than what we are used to today, they are very frightening and have us questioning what our future is going to look like.

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I think what makes us think of these societies as alarming is not that they are cruel

but that they are not all that far away from where we are heading today. It may be far off but either of these societies can easily become our reality in the future. The idea of love and desires is apparent in both novels. In The Hunger Games, Katniss struggles between the characters Peeta (who is in the games with her) and Gale (who she left back in).