Food Scarcity, Oppression, and the Hunger Games

This weekend I read the first few chapters of The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, for the second time. I read the series a few years ago and have also enjoyed the movies starring Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. This reading was a little different because I read the first chapters now enlightened by other readings and discussions that have taken place in our literature studies class focused on food.

In the past seven weeks of class, we've delved into the corruption of the food industry and the government that regulates it (or does not regulate it, depending on the circumstances);  the mistreatment of people who work within that industry, from migrant workers in Michigan to slaughterhouse workers in Florida to coffee plantation workers in Guatemala; the availability of cheap, fast food as opposed to the (often) scarcity of healthful food grown locally,especially in inner-city areas; the staggering number of food-insecure households and the unfortunate recent government cuts to food stamps...

Though The Hunger Games takes place in a fictional location in a fictional future world, the dynamics of society haven't changed much.  In fact, the wealthy capital city controls the people in the districts through the lack of food.  Katniss comments on all the people who die of starvation in her district, and we find out that Katniss and her family were dangerously close to starvation, saved by a couple loaves of bread from Peeta. At one point, Katniss wonders what people in the capital city do all day since they just push a button and get food.   Katniss spends most of her morning hunting and foraging to provide food for her family since her father was killed in the coal mines, which prevents their family from earning a living wage.  The wealth of the capital is a stark contrast to the way Katniss and her family (and many families in her district) barely survive.

The unequal distribution of food and resources is a problem that feeds most of the other problems in this fictional society.  It's also the way a very small group of people exerts control over a much larger group of people.  It's not much different than the way the Irish were oppressed by the English in "A Modest Proposal," the way Rigoberta Menchu and the Mayan people were oppressed by Banana Republics and the dictators of these countries, the way migrant workers are oppressed by the wealthy food industry, the way immigrants in Chicago were oppressed by their employers in The Jungle...

Are we destined to continue this pattern as the larger, poorer classes are kept poor and powerless in their efforts to barely survive? Check out the changes in wealth distribution in the United States over the past fifty years (video found on Allen Webb's blog)...are we really committed to democracy, a strong middle class, equal rights?