The Hunger Games Historical Context 🏹 (2024)

Publication History

Suzanne Collins closed a 6 figure deal for The Hunger Games series with Scholastic after writing the first novel. The Hunger Games was published in the United States on September 14, 2008, with an initial printing of 50,000 copies. This was a hardcover issue that was increased to 800,000 copies by February 2010. During the same year, the rights of the novel were sold in 38 territories across the world.

The book was released in paperback in July 2010, and is the first in the Hunger Games series, with the sequels being Catching Fire and Mockingjay, respectively. It was released as an audiobook (in December 2008) and has been converted into a hugely successful film as well.

Suzanne Collins Personal Context

Suzanne Collins wrote The Hunger Games sometime after she began writing a series of books for children called The Underland Chronicles. She was flipping through the channels on her television and felt unsettled when the images from the coverage of the Afghanistan and Iraq war began to blend with a reality show. This is when she first had the idea of a televised battle royale to the death.

Collins was also inspired by her father’s career in the Air Force, which gave her an insight into the impact of war as well as the disastrous effects of poverty and starvation. She has noted how it was especially difficult for her to write the dark passages, but that she enjoyed writing Katniss’s happy past.

Collins has also had an active role in the film adaptation of the novel. She adapted The Hunger Games for film herself and wanted a slightly older actress to play the role of Katniss Everdeen. This is because she felt that the role called for “a certain maturity and power” which was found in the form of 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence.

In an interview with the Vice President of Scholastic, David Levithan, Suzanne Collins has mentioned that she wanted to find a project to continue her explorations of the “just-war” theory, which she had begun with The Underland Chronicles. She says,

In The Hunger Games Trilogy, the districts rebel against their own government because of its corruption. The citizens of the districts have no basic human rights, are treated as slave labor, and are subjected to the Hunger Games annually. I believe the majority of today’s audience would define that as grounds for revolution. They have just cause but the nature of the conflict raises a lot of questions. Do the districts have the authority to wage war? What is their chance of success? How does the re-emergence of District 13 alter the situation? When we enter the story, Panem is a powder keg and Katniss the spark.

Greek and Roman Influences

Features of Greek and Roman mythology enter Suzanne Collins’ works in some form of the other, and they form the very foundation of The Hunger Games.

Collins admits that she was able to connect the idea behind the Hunger Games to the myth of Theseus instantly.

The connection to the myth of Theseus happened immediately. As a young prince of Athens, he participated in a lottery that required seven girls and seven boys to be taken to Crete and thrown into a labyrinth to be destroyed by the Minotaur. In one version of the myth, this excessively cruel punishment resulted from the Athenians opposing Crete in a war. Sometimes the labyrinth’s a maze, sometimes it’s an arena.

Collins was further inspired by Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, which outlines the tale of Theseus. In this novel, the tributes from the tale are trained for the arena where they face a wild bull for the entertainment of the elite. The “show” ended only when the tributes were dead, or the bull was exhausted.

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