Burn With Us, By Susan Shau Ming Tan

Susan Shau Ming Tan’s essay of the Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy titled “Burn with Us” is a psychological analysis of the dystopian novels. She analyzes the dominating characteristics of the capital and how through the Hunger Games they are able to silence the population by destroying the innocence of childhood. She also points out some of the defining characteristics of Katniss Everdeen, considered one of the strongest written female protagonists, and shows how she is able to use the oppressive nature of the hunger games to unite the country into rebellion against the capital. This powerful piece of analysis points out some of the more disturbing points in the world of Panem and enlightens the motivations of Katniss as she struggles to be the girl on fire and the girl who just wants to

protect her sister.
Tan’s analysis of Katniss Everdeen portrays her in a vulnerable yet courageous manner. Tan reads the world of the Hunger Games as a complex system in which adults are dependent on the children. This interpretation of a society where children are the providers and states that “the journey to adulthood less a process of coming-of-age than it is the result of odds and luck.

(Tan pg.56)” This fascination of the role reversal occurring in this world brings an interesting perceptive to The Capital’s motivations and methods to their dominance. By making the children go through with this horrifying threat of the Hunger Games, they lose all sense of individuality and simply become tools of The Capital. Tan writes that, “The elaborate rituals preceding the Games cement this emphasis on the child, or more specifically, on the child as object. (Tan pg. 60)” There is a bit of irony occurring in this analysis. Tan focuses on the objectification of these children and points out The Capital’s need to make them become symbols for glamourous violence. Yet while we as readers acknowledge how awful it is that these children are forced to become both objects of desire and objects of violence; we are doing the same thing in reality. The fact that The Hunger Games has become such the success that it is, we too fall into this objectification directed for these characters. Many readers of The Hunger Games praise the

story for its gripping action, its realistic portrayals of violence, and the romantic conflicts occurring between Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. Some of the biggest praises the target audience has for these books are the same traits which The Capital is forcing upon the characters. The nature of the series’ popularity lead the readers to oddly parallel the same views of The Capital. Not only is Tan pointing out a striking comparison between our culture’s view of violence and beauty and a dystopian government’s tools for oppression, Tan also highlights the reason Katniss becomes both the object of affection within Panem alongside the symbol for rebellion against the same society which praises her. When Katniss is presented in the games, she is seen as an object of desire, which empowered her in a way previously impossible. It is because she is so well regarded she is able to voice her opinions and is able to act out without control of The Capitol.
Tan’s analysis of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy highlights the oppression through objectification The Capital uses in order to maintain control of the thirteen districts. Just like in our own society of popular culture, their sexualization of these violent children heightens how they use the children as a tool of oppression; and it is only through Katniss Everdeen’s manipulation of these oppressive standards set upon her, she is able to light the flames of rebellion as the girl on fire.