My love of dystopian fiction came at a young age. My geeky family of night owls guaranteed I was surrounded by books. I was so absorbed by them I learned to read and understand words but mispronounce them in conversation—my Mom will tell you stories about depot and hors d'oeuvre, which an unfamiliarity with French and slight dyslexia rendered ‘horse-devour’, an eater of equines. The young adult genre in its current form was different during my high school years, so in about fifth grade I went from Choose Your Own Adventure to 1984 without any sort of cognitive bridge. This explains a lot.
I became fascinated with futurism, totalitarian states, and technology as indistinguishable from magic. Today, a young person with similar interests would be overwhelmed with choices, books filled with characters begging to be identified with. This diary will examine the political themes of one such text, Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.
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