Teaching: The Hunger Games

 

This summer, I'm teaching a second-year writing class with the theme "Coming of Age in the American Experience." We're reading David Sedaris! We're watching My So-Called Life and My Super Sweet Sixteen! We're listening to Radiolab and This American Life! So far, the class is going well. We had a great discussion about David Sedaris's essay "I Like Guys," and we all lived through the amazingly-awkward 90's-ness of My So-Called Life, though I had to explain that matching mother-daughter outfits were, briefly (?), a thing.

The most fun we've had so far has been reading and discussing The Hunger Games. Only two of them had read the novel. Only three had seen the movie. (And, what is that? Everyone saw the movie.) BUT they loved it. To wit:

• "I finished the book." (This, on the first discussion day.)
• "I couldn't put it down."
• "I had to make myself stop at page 147."
• "I've decided to re-read the entire series."

Best of all, I ran into one of my students in the hall today, two days after finishing The Hunger Games in class, and the first words out of his mouth were "The second book was even better." As it turns out, quite a few of them have already started reading it.

Now, I'm not pretending that The Hunger Games is any kind of high fiction. Even as young adult literature goes, I can think of many, many novels that are more skillfully written. But Collins's novel is certainly compelling, and it provides much to talk about in both thematic and formal terms. Plus: my students are reading more on their own time, which I count as a victory any day.

We talked about The Dystopian Novel, Collins's social critique, first-person narration and the nature of perspective, spectacle, persona, the romance plot and (of course) coming of age, as well as a number of other topics. We also had time for an "Analysis Workshop" designed to help them think of profitable questions. Interestingly, two of the guys in my class were extremely invested in the romance plot between Katniss and Peeta--which I worried stemmed from some reluctance to think about teenage girls as anything but primarily concerned with L-O-V-E. We made good discussion out of that investment, however, and, all in all, the two (long, summer-session) days dedicated to the novel were some of the best in my teaching experience.