Even if we see how the game is constructed, we find ourselves thinking that any alternative values such as kindness, compassion, collaboration are for losers. Like Katniss, we come to believe that such impulses, rather than being the only route to our collective survival, represent our greatest danger. This is the struggle, then, for us to avoid... See more

At first sight Panem may not resemble a ‘free market,’ but there are more similarities between the two than we might think. The Games particularly model capitalist competition. We’re compelled to see others as tributes. There are limited resources – artificially limited, in turns out, to force us to fight each other.