Survival in the Arena: Eco-Critical Perspectives on Power and Naess' Deep Ecology in The Hunger Games

The natural world plays an undeniable role in Suzanne Collins’ 2008 young adult novel The Hunger Games, and yet we seem to only talk about the love triangle, the class divide between the Capitol and the rest of Panem, and how Peeta’s cake decorating skills apparently meant he could create this camouflage in the arena:

The Hunger Games trilogy follows Katniss Everdeen, a poor teenager from District 12 in Panem. Every year, Panem hosts The Hunger Games, in which two teenagers from each District are chosen to compete in a battle royale death match. Katniss volunteers on behalf of her younger sister, Prim, and this sparks a saga of political unrest and revolution for the country.

There has been some scholarly analysis on the subjugation of nature alongside the subjugation of women in The Hunger Games, but none so far focusing on the application of Deep Ecology to how Katniss’ harmonic relationship with the environment around her brings her success at every turn. 

Ecocriticism is a newer school of critical theory, and it studies literary representations of literature to understand how humans interact with it. This involves not asking whether the text is appreciating nature, but whether it is presenting an anthropocentric or eco-centric view of the world. Merely because a poem or novel may describe the sublime or the beauty of nature does not mean it is a worthy text from an eco-critical lens. Deep ecology is an approach to the environment that emphasises being in harmony with the natural world and dedication to its protection. It was theorised by Arne Naess in 1973, who argued that this so-called ‘ecosophy’ is a ‘philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium’ (Naess, 1973, p. 99). Naess’ seven norms of Deep Ecology, outlined in this paper, can be used for ‘plotting possible futures’ and Naess encourages the norms to be ‘freely used and elaborated’ (Naess, 1973, p. 99). Naess’s seven deep ecology norms are deeply relevant to modern ecocriticism, as a set of criteria against texts can be analysed for their relationship to nature. 

District 12 is the ‘least prestigious, poorest, most ridiculed’ district in Panem (Collins, 2008, p. 193), and since there is no man in Katniss’ family to work in the mines, her family face deep food insecurity. She solves this problem by hunting, gathering and fishing in the woods near her home. District 12 is physically separated from the woods by ‘a high chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire loops’ (Collins, 2008, p.4), but the fence is also symbolic of the separation its people have to nature. The people of District 12 are literally fenced in, supposedly to protect them from the ‘predators that live in the woods’ (Collins, 2008, p.4), but one cannot deny penning people in makes them a lot easier to control. They are denied the freedom and beauty of nature because they are unnaturally confined like farm animals. It is in the woods that Katniss has learned the survival skills that lead to her success in the arena. 

Her knowledge of the natural world meant that in the wilderness of the arena, Katniss can use it to her advantage. When Peeta offers her berries he had collected, she examines them, and her father’s voice tells her “Not these, Katniss. Never these. They’re nightlock. You'll be dead before they reach your stomach” (Collins, 2008, p. 305), so she avoids consuming them. Later on, she uses the nightlock berries to attempt suicide with Peeta after the Gamemakers reneged on their decision to allow two champions to win, and they give in and allow them both to be victors. 

Katniss lives in accordance Naess’ norms of deep ecology, particularly that of symbiosis and biological egalitarianism (Naess, 1973, pp. 95-96), because she learns about nature and how to live alongside it, living integrated into eco-systems. This is in comparison to her less successful co-tributes, who view the human rule in an eco-system as one of domination. And in the end, this brings her success not only in the Arena, but in the forthcoming revolution and the rest of her life.

Reference List:

Collins, S 2008, The Hunger Games, Scholastic US, New York.

Connors, S, 2013, '“I Try to Remember Who I am and Who I Am Not”: The Subjugation of Nature and Women Represented in The Hunger Games' in P.L.Thomas (ed), Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction: Challenging Genres, Sense Publishers, Boston, pp. 145-164.

Naess, A 1973, 'The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary', Inquiry, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 95-100.

Pereira, Â.M 2019, 'The Hunger Games is a Utopia? The Feminine as a Bridge to the Return to Nature in Contemporary Dystopia',Trabalhos em Linguística Aplicada, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 743-758.