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Main Points of: Playing Games: Governmental Influence and Individual Assertion in Suzanne Collins 'The Hunger Games' series.

Many young adult novels have protagonists that rebel against oppressive governments.

Both Coin and Snow dictate certain social and political conditions to their citizens.

Snow uses strict laws and physical enforcement on the districts. (He also uses starvation to control them.)

Coin demands her citizens conform to very strict social and political standards.

The State is a ruling machine that allows the ruling class to dominate everyone else.

Both presidents try to keep their citizens docile.

Snow and Coin have set conditions under which Katniss can rebel but when she sets her own conditions she can control her own decisions.

Contemporary young adult fiction often has governments that exploit their citizens.

Risk societies are those where the government does things that lead to environmental and social risks for its citizens.

The kids in the districts and taught that what the Capitol does is normal.(Which is really propaganda. Consider how the German students were indoctrinated into the Nazi mode of thinking in their schools.)

Capitalist governments must create a class that it can exploit.

Governments in young adult fiction often define its citizens as it sees fit.

There are two ways protagonists assert their identity. Accept what their government says or rebel against it.

The second group uses their own moral and ethical concepts.

In order to succeed a rebelling protagonist must be able to change the entire system.

To develop an advanced moral perspective the protagonist needs access to history, culture and memory.

The Capitol tries to define it's district citizens as something other than fully human.

Snow's government controls its citizens through economic oppression, national spectacles and the schools. (Also physical oppression in the case of the Peacekeepers.)

The citizens in the Capitol have exchanged their political power for luxury and entertainment.

The people in the districts have almost no chance of changing their jobs.

The district young people can enter their names in the drawings in exchange for food. It also increases their chance of being chosen for the games, though.

Poaching in the woods is punishable by death.

There is a black market. The Peacekeepers in District 12 don't seem to be bad people, though, and actually shop at the Hob which is a black market.

They can do this as long as the Capitol ignores District 12 and they will do that as long as they produce enough coal.

Any act of defiance will be met with some form of retaliation.

The schools don't teach students about other districts and they glorify the Capitol.

Snow's government treats punishment as a public ceremony.

Punishing criminals public ally provides a tangible demonstration of the power of the Capitol.

The Capitol tries put District 13 (which was supposedly destroyed) as a prime example of what happens to those who defy the Capitol.

Citizens are required to watch the games and this is another control method used by the Capitol.

District 13 holds its citizens to a strict schedule.

People in District 13 have almost no free time.

The schedules printed on their arms can be used to keep track of where they are at any time.

The parade during the opening ceremonies for the games turn's Katniss' body into a commodity.

Coin wants to use Katniss as a piece of propaganda.

The games are used to show just how powerless the districts are.

The first decision Katniss makes which has a lasting effect is when she threatens to commit suicide with Peeta at the end of the 74th hunger games.

District 12 shows a major act of defiance when they choose not to applaud when Katniss is becomes a tribute.

The attack on the hospital is used by the Capitol to show its power and by District 13 to show just how far Snow will go to retain that power.

Peeta saying that Katniss was pregnant was an attempt to influence the audience at the interview and it seemed to do that.

Katniss agrees to play Coin's role due to her own compassion for others.

She demonstrates some of her own power in setting conditions for cooperating with District 13.

Katniss prefers to be non-violent if she can be.

In the end Katniss recognizes just how similar Snow and Coin are.