Review Of Suzanne Collins's 'The Hunger Games'

In a blink of an eye, one’s life can change forever. On September 4, 1957, it was Elizabeth Eckford’s first day at Central High school in Little Rock Arkansas. Elizabeth was among the nine black students who had been selected to enter Little Rock Central High School, an all white school. Approaching the high school, there were hundreds and hundreds of people yelling and chanting against her. Elizabeth was the only one out of the nine that came to school that day so she was known by everyone by her face and name. In fact, her face was on the cover of numerous news channels, newspapers, and magazines not only because of the integrating of the high school but because of how badly most of the townspeople and students reacted towards Elizabeth.

In 2008, a woman named Suzanne Collins wrote the book series The Hunger Games. In her novel she described one of her fictional characters named Rue, on page 45 she wrote “And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that 's she 's very like Prim in size and demeanor…”. Many people were scandalized and “confused” to see that in the actual film of the Hunger Games, Rue was an African American girl and not a caucasian girl. There were thousands of tweets in regards to Rue being a young black actress. Such disgusting tweets included: “kk call me racist but when I found out rue was black her death wasn 't as sad” and “Since when was rue been a nigger”(Stewart 2). In other words, it was not upsetting enough that a young girl was killed. If the actress were to be white, then many more would have some sort of sympathy. There were many many more tweets expressing how disappointed they were to find out that Rue was not played by a young white actress. This event is similar to the events in Elizabeth and Hazel because if it were the other way around that morning, Hazel being the victim getting yelled at by Elizabeth, Elizabeth would have had received such a harder time than Hazel did, and mainly because she was black. The Hunger Games was out in theaters in 2012; that is over 60 years that had passed since the incident in Little Rock with Hazel. Would

But in reality, this priceless photo symbolizes how corrupt the United States still is. The only thing that has changed from the photo from the past to the present is how everyone is much more accepting of integrated public and private schools. Integrating schools was a large change for the US, but it is still unequal. According to Child Trends, a non-profit organization and non-partisan research center that tracks data about children says that “Educational expectations are lower for black children” (Cook 1). Most Black parents and schools do not have high expectations for their child/students to be extremely successful, for 2/3 cases, the parents are not educated themselves. Most African American children get their unmotivated mentality from their parents and schools since they do not encourage or focus on them as they should. When compared to white children, it is the opposite. White parents push and want their child to become extremely successful, having their own educational