Probably one of the few characters ever in which this meme carries implications like a loaded gun...

Also, has anyone ever considered the sound of Nick's surname?

"Car-away"—as in Daisy losing control of Gatsby's car and killing Myrtle Wilson. (This could also reference the scene in Gatsby's car, when he shows Nick his medals.)

Good news: the pain has subsided just enough so that I can stand and sit up straight for about five minutes.

Bad news: I’ve lost feeling in the back of my right leg 🫠

Me Explaining: This allows me to leave comments and notes within your paper so you can see why I grade the way I do.

Student: [submits a link to a View Only Google Doc] I didn't feel like converting, so here it is.

Today’s Lecture: The Fault in Unsourced References

So, apparently some Pro-Life individuals are looking to make a novel series set in a dystopian totalitarian dictatorship with a 1700 youth character death count as their banner book.

If you’re a sensible blogger who realizes the hypocrisy of such a claim; then just go ahead and like my post for a passing grade in Literary Reference and Analysis 101 and consider yourself exempt from my incoming rant. Anyone who is still left; take out your notepad. You’re now on a crash course in Death of the Author.

Quick Refresher: Citation is important students. Posting a claim in such a manner as Imissedreadingclass did leaves one sounding as Tronald Dump’s Twitter account. (Yes, I have misspelled names. No, I’m not correcting them.)

It should be noted that Hunger Games was written more-so with themes of societal class oppression than it is in anything regarding a fetus. I confidently say so because when I google search “is hunger games pro life,” the first result was an essay review by the Culture of Life Studies Program (a pro-life organization, mind you) stating that “the trilogy evolves into a story that recognizes the need to be free from oppression rather than the need to stop the killing of the innocent.”

The next two google result for that search were articles written by individuals who seemed to have more accreditation that they were Catholic than they were Literary Connoisseurs.

However, if imissedreadingclass wants to take the viewpoint, then let me offer a counter analysis.

Part One: The Major Incident

Alright class, pull out your copy Catching Fire and turn to Chapter 18. Movie viewers: we’re in the interviews, look for Katniss spinning in a fiery dress and play it from there. We see our recent District 12 victors going through the 75th hunger games ordeal. As Katniss and Peeta prepare to try to save the other, the interviews roll around. Peeta now fully plans to milk the star crossed lover strategy. To Katniss’s surprise, he tells Caesar Flickerman that the two of them are already married. Peeta mentions that it’s not official, but there’s a marriage ritual in District 12 that they did, and in their minds they’re as married as they could ever be. Caesar says it’s better that they had some time together before the Quell, but Peeta says if they’d known about the Quell they wouldn’t have done it, because now Katniss is pregnant. The audience bursts into an uproar as people cry and shout, and before they can be calmed, the tributes spontaneously begin reaching for each other.

Attempting to try to reason that the citizens of the capital have adapted a mentality against “the sins of the father” would be futile as multiple generations of children as young as twelve years of age have already been murder in the Hunger Games. Upon hearing that Katniss bares a child, citizens of the capital begin protesting Hunger Games; the same games that have been conducted for the previous seventy-four years that resulted with a median death count of 23 children killed per game. Over one thousand seven hundred children are killed by the hunger games, while generations worth of children grow up in terrible conditions and under fear of the capital. Even with all of this, the citizens only grow a moral backbone when it’s mentioned that a single fetus is now involved in the games. Sorry, did I say mentioned? I meant falsified.

Pro-Choice readers of the series could note the hypocrisy of the capital citizens and tie it to certain actions of Pro-Life individuals IRL. The United States of America made the decision to leave reproductive rights to the decision of the states, with many states moving to ban abortions. Meanwhile, the nation’s pandemic of school shootings continues due to gun right activists unwilling to let gun control policies infringe upon the second amendment.

The notion of this falsified fetus either ignores or damages the argument of personhood. While capital citizens protest against the Hunger Games due to their belief that this fetus should be seen as an individual as rights, the lead characters, readers and viewers know that the argument of personhood is invalid in this instance.

Since we can’t analyze the personhood within a nonexistent character, let us now turn our eyes to our leading lady.

Part Two: Katniss Everdeen and Jennifer Lawrence

Katniss Everdeen might be the most interesting main character with the least amount of agency in a story. Her lack of agency stems more so from the situations that she finds herself in. She’s presented with few choices and many ultimatums.

Now, if the Hunger Games was supposed to be a Pro Life message, then it would make sense for the protagonist to idolize the movement. Yet on a glance, the lead character doesn’t seem to demonstrate such in her character. Katniss Everdeen never wanted to have children. At the start of the series her reasoning was that she fear that they could be reap into the Hunger Games. By the end of her ordeal, her mentality suffered due to the emotional strain of losing her sister that she goes to live in solitude with Peeta. She still never wanted to have children, yet only does so to make Peeta happy. Between her damaged mentality and Peeta’s pestering, it would be hard to say if she had much of a choice in that.

One of the fault of this character is how in the one instance where she could have solved a problem in a peaceful manner, she chose to perform violence with resulted in the death of a character. We’ll get to that one in part four.

Actress Counterpart Jennifer Lawrence self reports that she advocates for the pro choice movement. Unlike irishironclad, I have the link to support this claim.

Part Three: Amandla Stenberg

Amandla Stenberg played the depiction of District 11’s Rue. Her performance of the young girl brought up a controversy of incalculable idiocy when some audience members were baffled that a dark skin girl was portraying a dark skin girl. IQ levels dropped below zero when implications among these quite bias critics expressed that casting the young Amandla Stenberg ruined their perception of Rue’s innocence and made the character’s death less sad for them.

The level of unhealthy bias presented to the young actress should never occur to any teenager in my belief. Nevertheless, Amandla Stenberg took it in stride and used this as a platform to advocate for marginalized communities, she herself sitting at the intersection of blackness and queerness. Her advocation is matched in her bravery in coming out as non-binary and gay.

I can’t help but wonder how many of Stenberg’s haters wear their KKK robes when they shout at women and other child-bearing individuals entering or leaving plan parenthood.

Now obviously not all Pro-Life individuals hold such hypocrisy, yet The Hunger Games Series presents its setting as a dystopia that Pro-Choice individuals fear: a society that is Pro-Control.

Part Four: Antagonist, Villainy, and the Greater of Two Evils, Oh My!

If the antagonists of the series had Pro Choice or Pro Abortion themes displayed in their character, then ifriskminor’snads would have a bar stool to lean on. The fact remains though that the longest standing antagonist can’t be labeled as either term. The ruling government of Panam is a totalitarian dictator by the name of President Snow. In my eyes, he’s practically a more efficient Emperor Palpatine seeing that the span of the Hunger Games outlasted the Star Wars Empire of the original trilogy. I would also say that he could identify as anti choice (considering that he is a dictator) and anti abortion (considering that he has a daughter of his own).

On the flip side of the Coin, District 13 leader President Coin is introduced as Snow political opposition. Yet readers who’ve finished the series are left with the impression that more similarities are found between our presidents than differences. Neither of them are above killing innocent people, as Snow reveals that Coin was responsible for the death of Primrose.

All of this presents Katniss with a situation of the lesser of two evils. Neither Snow or Coin have the moral ethics to take charge of the nation. Yet I can’t help but question Katniss decision. My belief is that a Pro-Life solution would be to introduce a third candidate rather than to assassinate Coin.

Conclusion

In presenting his belief that the Hunger Games series supports the Pro Life movement through its narrative, @irishironclad commits a horrific case of death of the author without justification. In doing so, he leaves an vast opening for counter arguments to cite contradictory instances. All of this leaves the movement that was reference with less credibility than before. With all this in mind, plus the grammatical issues within the post, it is my academic duty to fail this post with a major project grade of 2%.

I can personally understand using the Hunger Games as a banner book rather than the Judeo-Christian Bible, as said Bible puts the death toll of Panam to shame with the flooding in Noah’s time, the tenth plague of Egypt in the time of Moses, and the annihilation oh the city Lot fled from. However the movement from one book to the next didn’t change the lack of source material with the only reference contradicting the movement itself (Exodus 21:22-25).

“Are you familiar with the works of Truman Capote? I’m Breakfast at Tiffany’s but this place is strictly In Cold Blood.”

Veronica Lodge in 1x01 The River’s Edge (2016), written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote: A nonfiction novel published originally as a four-part series in The New Yorker magazine in 1965 and in book form in 1966. Capote used the techniques of fiction to tell the true story of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Kansas by a pair of drifters and of the subsequent capture, trial, and execution of the killers. [x]