Hidden Messages Inside The Hunger Games

March 18, 2025

Literature

Nesha Ruther

Writer at Bond & Grace

“I don’t write about adolescence. I write about war, for adolescents.” —Suzanne Collins

Few young adult novels since the Harry Potter series have had as enduring a mark on popular culture as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy. Set in post-apocalyptic North America, the nation Panem is ruled by a tyrannical government that oversees 12 districts of varying degrees of poverty and disenfranchisement. Once a year, the Capitol of Panem requires each district to send two young adults to fight to the death in a barbaric ritual known as The Hunger Games. The novels follow heroine Katniss Everdeen as she battles in the games and eventually becomes a symbol of the resistance. Since the first book’s publication in 2008, the series has sold over 100 million copies and has been translated into more than 55 languages.

Part of what makes Collins’ world so enduring is its complex and multifaceted examination of tyranny and power. The Hunger Games are a brutal contest, yes, but they are also an exploration into how media and propaganda can be used to subdue and control a population. Part of what makes Katniss so endearing as a character is not some biological difference or innate superiority. She is a regular girl who, out of necessity, has become exceptionally skilled with a bow and arrow. But through her role in the games, she becomes a symbol, one others seek to manipulate to their favor or stamp out completely.

Collins has said that she was inspired to write the books after a stint of late-night channel surfing, flipping back and forth between a reality TV show competition and news coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The images of mindless entertainment mixed with shocking violence blurred together in her mind, sparking the idea of a competition that would be both.

To help craft this story, Collins turned to Greek and Roman mythology. As a child, she was fascinated by the myth of Theseus, in which the young Prince of Athens is selected by lottery to be one of seven boys and seven girls sent to Crete and dropped in a labyrinth to be killed by a Minotaur. Many characters in Collins’ series also have Greek and Roman names, like the Hunger Games hosts Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith, as well as Castor, Pollux, Plutarch Heavensbee, and Seneca Crane. Seneca is named after a Roman who was forced to commit suicide after plotting to kill the Emperor Nero, much like how Seneca Crane is locked by President Snow in a room of poisonous berries, leaving him no choice but to commit suicide or starve.

One of the most fascinating bits of Greek and Roman influence is within the name of the story’s setting: Panem. Panem is the Latin word for bread, moreso, the popular expression Panem et circenses (Bread and Circus) perfectly summarizes the premise of the book. Bread and Circus refers to the superficial appeasement needed to keep a population satisfied. The Roman satirical poet Juvenal, to whom the phrase is attributed, saw it as a way that rulers got away with allowing their people to suffer: give them bread to eat and circuses to entertain them, and they will not revolt. The Hunger Games takes this idea to its most sadistic end, with the circus being the murder of children for sport.

In the end, however, the people do revolt. Another core concept Collins wanted to explore was the theory of the Just War. Collins states: “The Just War theory has evolved over thousands of years in an attempt to give you the moral right to wage war and its aftermath…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.”

How that revolution plays out, however, is far more complicated. Characters like Gale and Peeta, for example, are not simply two points on the series’ central love triangle but offer opposing views on what ends are legitimized by the Just War theory. Gale is confrontational and full of anger; he joins the resistance and sees violence as a necessity for a better future, even when innocents are killed in the process. Peeta, on the other hand, is more of a peacemaker and values diplomacy over violence. It is up to Katniss to not only choose between the two men but navigate these two opposing strategies.

The enduring genius of The Hunger Games is that it teaches young readers to identify how the media they consume can be used to keep them complacent and suffer injustices they would normally rebel against. The novel helps navigate challenging questions of whether violence is justified and if so, when.

Collins herself puts the necessity of these stories best, saying: “It’s crucial that young readers are considering scenarios about humanity’s future because the challenges are about to land in their laps. I hope they question how elements of the book might be relevant to their own lives. About global warming, about our mistreatment of the environment, but also questions like: how do you feel about the fact that some people take their next meal for granted when so many other people are starving in the world?”

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For more information check out…

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Levithan, Daniel, “Suzanne Collins Talks About ‘The Hunger Games,’ the Books and the Movies”, The New York Times, October 1, 2018.

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REBGuest, “The Political Message of The Hunger Games”, The Artifice, August 3, 2014.