What Are The Similarities Between A Long Way Gone And The Hunger Games

Children who are poor are often at a disadvantage and have limited access to the basic necessities or luxuries that others have. Thus, they become victims to violence on a physical, emotional and political level, especially because the government has the power, wealth, resources and authority to implicate and enforce change. But sometimes the very system that is put in place to protect is the very cause of the destruction of the people it governs. Essentially governments acknowledge that life is a basic right but survival is a privilege. This is shown within Ishmael Beah’s “A Long Way Gone” and Susanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games”, in that both books display the many aspects of violence which children are subjected to, causing the main characters to become children soldiers, combatting everyday struggles of poverty, hunger and brutality. Fiction and Nonfiction

“I became frustrated with living in fear. I felt as if I was always waiting for death to come to me” (Beah, 46). He began questioning if he was actually alive or he was just living. He lacked enthusiasm and his spirit began to diminish. “If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person he or she will die” (Beah, 54). Beah remembers those words of his father and changes his mind to not show emotion but hide emotion and basically become stoic and disconnect himself from the world.

Both “The Hunger Games” and “A Long Way Gone” are intertwined in that they both tell stories that shed light on the horrors of children soldiers as well as the effects of violence on children. Collins use of the “hunger games” is a literary technique and it actually means war. Thus, the main characters are both children soldiers who fight in a civil war in order to survive. They became distant and detached themselves in order to remain unaffected by the violence that took place and only when it was over could they truly absorb the realities that they’ve