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The Main Points of: To Kill a Mockingjay: An Ideological Criticism of The Hunger Games

The three themes of oppression in the paper are economic, political and social.

Politically the novel has encouraged copycat uprisings in similarly oppressed nations.

President Snow is evil.

The barriers between districts are to keep them from interacting with each other.

Katniss waivers between emotional withdraw and rage/anger in District 13.

All three books were listed in the American Library Association of burned books due to their being unsuited to age group, religious viewpoint, anti-ethnic, insensitivity, offensive language, occult/satanic, violence and sexually explicit.

Research topics for papers on the series include those dealing with music theory, media use of propaganda, female heroine power and Appalachia, among others.

The female lead character is capable of rational thinking, problem solving and physical action.

Inequality among classes is evident in the books and movies.

In dystopian novels the rich are in a utopia and the poor/powerless are in a dystopia.

Dystopian pessimism assumes that a dystopia is inevitable.

The large fandom that has formed around the series is an indication of just how successful it has been.

The series explores the power of television and the influence it has on our lives.

Television inculcates daily materialism, status seeking and other false values.

The Hunger Games can be considered political fiction.

There are three seems in this series: power, identity and culture.

Power includes hunger, family, poverty, violence and other things.

In current reality citizens are turning from hard news coverage to superficial television.

The districts can be considered prison camps and the Peacekeepers the guards.

Katniss goes from killing small animals for food to being reluctant to killing humans to killing human including President Coin.

The Gamekeepers are a group that little if any background or history has been given to.

The violence in the series is largely due to the Gamekeepers and what they have done.

Pitting the tributes from different districts against each other is a political devise of divide and conquer.

One of the most obvious forms of control in the trilogy is hunger.

District 13 functions in the manner of an oppressive regime.

The wedding of Finnick and Anne is a mix of different cultures.

Folklore is shown in the series by the use of medicinal herbs and snow blankets.

Music is represented by ballads, love songs and mountain airs.

American of today is not kind to those who don't have English as a first language or don't 'blend in.'

Katniss has little self-awareness (at least at first.)

Katniss does not fit the traditional gender stereotypes.

Neither does Peeta.

Propaganda has a history of encouraging conversation among citizens.

Repressive State Apparatus controls citizens through police, government and court systems.

Schools introduce the first rules of society.

Modern society is largely controlled by the use of symbols.

This can be negative as in body shaming.

A society's systems can be impacted by economic changes such as the Great Depression.

Knowledge is power so the ruling classes try to keep that knowledge from others as when blacks in the South were not allowed to be educated pre-Civil War and during the Civil War.

The Capitol controls production and can order longer shifts.

Districts can't share things with each other.

Victors suffer from PTSD.

Districts closest to the Capitol are the richest. This would be Districts 1 and 2.

Working class districts are 9, 10 and 11.

Working poor class are districts 7 and 8.

The poorest district is 12.

President Snow's propaganda techniques echo those of Hitler and Nazi Germany.

There's no information on the first rebellion other than that it happened, the Capitol one and District 13 literally went underground.

Coin wants at least one more Hunger Games using children from the Capitol.

One Peacekeeper in District 12 used young girls as prostitutes.

(I think the Peacekeepers can be compared to the Nazi SS in their ability to use power and violence to keep the citizens in line.)

The Capitol provides minimal food rations which results in hunger which weakens any ability for massive resistance.

Rue had never had a whole chicken leg for herself. (Think about that for a minute. Never having one single chicken leg during her whole 12 years of life. That's not just bad, it's disgusting.)

Districts 1 and 2 have training academies for tributes. (The rest of the districts seem to get minimal education and that is mostly propaganda and how to work on whatever that district produces.

Victors are used as propaganda puppets.

President Snow poisons his opponents.

Katniss' education was limited.

Katniss is a survivalist.

She is the least-educated, least-nourished and least social of all the tributes.

The regimentation of District 13 pretty much does away with class struggles and economic oppression. There are no Peacekeepers. There is no hunger.

District 13 uses Katniss for their own purposes.

Effie Trinket shows cultural imperialism.

She sees the success of her tributes as a possible stepping stone to a higher position.

Johanna has become marginalized in the society.

The Capitol can't control her since there is no one left that they can threaten that means anything to her.

Prim does not participate in violence, corruption or rule-breaking. (She's about as innocent as they come.)

The oppression the Capitol uses can lead to mental illness and addition in addition to other problems.

This relates to our own society which usually cannot understand the mental illness a person has.

Substance abuse is common among victors.

Haymitch is like a war veteran, having seen the worst society can do.

Finnick was turned into a male prostitute by the Capitol but he found a way to gain information while being forced to do that.

They had threatened his family and Anna if he did not comply with them.

In reality in America the standardized tests place schools in direct competition with each other. (One of the things I've found interesting is to compare what a school says about how it's preparing students with their actual state test scores. I've looked at a bunch of places and finding a school that has a math proficiency of 50% is hard; most of the ones I've looked at are in the low twenties. Reading proficiency scores are also low. Even in the best scores I've found scores only get to around the sixties.

What is going to complicate this further is the movement of a bunch of states to do away with certain topics in education as being possibly 'upsetting' to students. This probably affects history/sociology classes and English classes the most.)

Students who focus primarily on math and reading may not develop other stills such as creative problem solving.

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