Blog Post #29: Catching Fire and Philosphy

In my book Catching Fire, the citizens of Panem are isolated in this controlling world of the rich and the extremely poor. That's it. There is no middle. In the book the people of Panem have absolutely no freedom, they shall do as the President says or face severe consequences. You can try to agree that the citizens still have freedom and is just punished if they do, they technically may still have freedom but they will be punished, so I wouldn't consider that freedom.

In Panem, freedom is a big issue because in every district every year two tributes are forced to fight to the death with twenty two other tributes and it isn't a choice, they can be executed if they choose not to. I believe The Hunger Games takes away their freedom, its not like they even have a choice its just that it's that this is their punishment for doubting the government centuries ago. But I believe the government doesn't have the right to take away their freedom because if the government haven't made such harsh rules before none of this would have happened, Panem would still be a happy place where the citizens weren't in poverty. I believe that since Panem is the only piece of land left on the earth that The Hunger Games can prevent overpopulation which may be a good thing, but also forcing kids to lose sanity and kill each other because they have to, is cruel and not the way to punish the country. 


Another way I think freedom may be a huge issue and concern in Catching Fire is because in this book the citizens of Panem have absolutely no freedom at all. 
Some people may think yes yes, some people say they can see the future so then you don't have freedom they just have options but they aren't really options since the choice was already chosen for them, but in terms of rights and having democracy and all that good stuff, the citizens have none of that. They can't vote for a president, they cannot know what goes on outside of their own districts, and only the richest people in the world can have access to the Capitol. If they want to change all this and get freedom, their only choice is to either start an uprising or runaway and live in the woods, and both of those choices would be punishable by death if any person of authority like a peacemaker, are to find you.


In conclusion, in The Hunger Games trilogy freedom is a huge issue, and not having freedom is one big part of the story and series in general. The reason why Panem even has a Hunger Games and districts and stuff is because the government don't allow the citizens to be free. 

Blog Post #28: Catching Fire and Terra Nova (the tv series)

Usually I would do a cross book inquiry, but for this post I want to talk about how Catching Fire and The Hunger Games trilogy in general, reminds me of the television series "Terra Nova" on FOX (mostly before they went back in time.)

The Hunger Games trilogy is about a destroyed planet thousands of years in the future with very strict laws and is not a democracy, there is a president, but the president is more of a dictator than a president. And in The Hunger Games, everyone is basically poor living in harsh conditions. In Terra Nova, the setting is also thousands of years in the future, but instead of everyone being surrounded by nature, everyone is surrounded by technology. And that is the biggest difference about these two stories, in The Hunger Games, only the most wealthy people use technology daily but poor people still manage to eat or get some food in their mouths like when Katniss goes hunting to find food, but in Terra Nova, everyone uses technology, the series is about a portal that sends the people back into Jurassic times! But in Terra Nova, its harder to find food than to use a computer. But alike The Hunger Games, in Terra Nova, their society has very strict rules, there is barely any space left on earth for humans to live just like in The Hunger Games, so everything is limited. Also there are very harsh living conditions in both stories. In The Hunger Games, kids are chosen to fight to the death every year in an arena as a televised event! And also, there are 12 districts, most are very poor that they have to break the law to get food. And in Terra Nova, the citizens of America often have to wear an oxygen mask since the air is so polluted! And there are also strict laws that one family cannot have more than two kids. And in the Shannon family (the family in which the series is about) has to hide their third child in the family every time the police comes to check on them.

In Terra Nova, the 3/5 of the Shannon family get chosen to go through a portal back to Jurassic times where dinosaurs were alive and roamed the earth. The point of this portal is to go back in time to change human ways, make the earth a better place, and start a new civilization. When the mom, Elisabeth, and her son, Josh, and daughter, Maddy, go through the portal, Elisabeth's husband, Jim (the dad) runs and jumps illegally through the portal with the third child, Zoe, who is only five years old hiding in his backpack so the whole family can go back in time to the place the commander of this journey, Taylor, calls Terra Nova. This is the point in the story where Terra Nova starts to really relate to The Hunger Games. In this part of the show, Jim gets rejoins the police force (he was fired from this job before coming to Terra Nova for punching a cop in the face for wanting to take Zoe away when she was still a toddler, and was imprisoned for years.) Here in this part, everyone struggles to learn all the pros and cons about Terra Nova. They have to become more involved with their environment like Katniss from The Hunger Games is and learn how to look for food and berries. Now, they have to learn to survive like Katniss does and become a fighter because here there are not only EXTREMELY strict laws like in Panem, there are also dinosaurs trying to eat you. 

Overall, these two series remind me of the other for some reason and I really like stories like these. I think they are alike the most though because they are Sci-Fi stories and the two stories have situations where it is hard to live and the characters are going through very tough times.

Blog Post #27: The rebellion starting in Catching Fire

So right now I am half way done with Catching Fire and now the rebellion or uprising is starting. I wonder why everything started all of a sudden. District 8 was the one who started the idea of this uprising. District 8 didn't seem like a district that would be the one to start an uprising since during the games, Katniss or Peeta didn't kill an tributes from there, and this district wasn't always talked about. If I were to predict which district would start an uprising, I would guess District 11. I would expect District 11 to start an uprising because one of their tributes in the last games, Rue, were killed by one of the Careers and since she was the youngest in the whole games, (she was 12 at the time) and this was considered sort of a murder (which it technically was) of the Capitol, because the reason why she died was because the Capitol created this messed up game. 


This uprising starts a whole series of events. I forgot exactly what happens after all this but I do know this all eventually leads to a rebellion and the discovery of the secret underground district that should have been destroyed years ago, District 13. I think that this kind of society would definitely lead to actions like this. I can never imagine America as a country other than a free democracy, let alone a country where people are killed in the street and kids are picked every year to kill each other as a television program!!! I think if an uprising like this would ever happen in America, the government would never punish us by getting the police to kill us off in the streets, since the U.S. is pretty organized now, I think the only time when this would ever happen here is if the condition of the world is so bad where we would have to go into a phase or way of life where everything is limited and the rules are extremely strict.

Blog Post #26: So far in Catching Fire...

So right now in Catching Fire, Katniss and Peeta finished the victory tour through all the districts of Panem and they have just finished visiting the Capitol where Peeta proposed to Katniss. I think now at this point in the book, all the action is gonna really start. I read this book over a year ago so I only vaguely remember what happened, the really important parts. I forgot all about all about the victory tour and the proposal. 

I think that in this point I will start to see many new characters like I remember there was allies Katniss had in the Quarter Quell like Beetee, Finnick, and many others. I think this is when many new characters are introduced and new personalities are introduced. Soon, many characters start to change, like one example is how Peeta gets manipulated by the Capitol and turns from good to evil. As I remember this starts to happen either during the games, or at the end of the games (if he is in the Quarter Quell because I totally forgot!) 

But as I remember from the book, Katniss doesn't change much throughout this book, the one thing I think has definitely changed about her is that she knows how Panem works, she knows how to work the camera. Katniss is still the same shy, brave, adventurous girl she was since the beginning of the series but I think now she knows what President Snow wants from her, especially cause she put the whole country in danger. So basically I think that Katniss is the same person she was since the start, just when she's not being recorded, or in the media, or with her superiors.

So overall, I think this is the part of my book where everything gets complicated and intense and this is where the real action starts. So I can't wait to keep reading to find out what happens because I can't remember all the specifics on this book so I hope to develop more and complex ideas of the book reading it through the second time!

Blog Post #25: Rereading Catching Fire

Now that I finished "Dead to You" by Lisa McMann, I need to start a new book and since no new books are really catching my eye right now, I decided to reread "Catching Fire" by Suzanne Collins, this book is the sequel to "The Hunger Games."

I wanted to reread this book because I think I didn't understand the book that well the first time I read it. So far in the book nothing has really happened yet, right now Katniss and Peeta are going on the victory tour for the victor or in this case, victors of the hunger games. They are going to each district in Panem to celebrate their victory while the citizens of that district have no choice but to act like they are happy they won. I think as soon as the Quarter Quell starts, I am going to get hooked into this book because that is when all the action and drama really starts. I think since this is the second time I am reading this book I am going to develop more complex and smarter ideas, I think since I already know what is going to happen, I know what I am supposed to pay attention to, rather than just paying attention to every little detail and getting confused all the time. 

I also think another reason why I want to reread this book is because "The Hunger Games" the movie just came out so since they are also going to make a movie out of the next two books, I want to catch up on the books since I forgot a little bit of what happens in the book since I last read it over a year ago. And because of the movie coming out soon, it gives me an opportunity to reread one of my favorite books ever and to reread the book so when the movie comes out I can compare the two easily. 

In conclusion, I am rereading the book "Catching Fire" because I really like the book, no other book catches my eye right now, and I want to just because the movie is coming out soon. I want to see what comes to my mind when I read it the second time. Maybe more ideas would pop up in my head.

Blog Post #24: Finished "Dead to You"

***SPOILER ALERT***


So, I recently finished the book, "Dead to You" by Lisa McMann, it is actually one of my favorite books I ever read. I think that it the plot line of this book really hooks you onto the story and the ending is just so unbelievable that you really hope there is a next book. So when I finished the book I was really confused about how everything happened and why it happened. 


So basically the story is about a boy names Ethan DeWilde who was abducted in front of his house when he was seven years old, and now that he is sixteen years old, he has found his way back to Minnesota where he used to live, but now that he's back, there is a lot of tension in the family. Ethan's little brother Blake hates him deeply, he thinks that everyone only loves Ethan and that Ethan ruined the family when he left. He is basically jealous of all the attention Ethan gets because he believes no one notices him. Gracie is the child in the family that basically replaced Ethan, but even though their relationship starts off a little weird, Ethan eventually starts to adore her. As her big brother, Ethan and Gracie get along very well, it's almost like they have formed an alliance because she doesn't exactly have the perfect relationship with Blake either so she protects Ethan in ways like for example when she told their parents that Blake started a fight between Ethan and Blake one time when they were sledding. 


I really enjoyed the book a lot, and the ending really grabbed me that when the big twist came I literally gasped. So what happened was that Blake suspected Ethan wasn't really him, he thought the boy who they brought home isn't the Ethan that left eleven years ago. The first suspicion he had was because "Ethan" remembered absolutely nothing about his life before he left. He didn't even remember his childhood best friend Cami, who lives across the street, he didn't remember a lot about his past, when he just arrived at the house he found a box of his old pictures but he couldn't remember being in any of them. And as Blake grew more suspicious, he decided to actually look for proof, and he actually found it. At school they were learning about genetics and traits, and the Ethan that just arrived had attached earlobes, but the old, young Ethan in all of the old pictures had earlobes that were not attached. Their parents didn't believe Blake and thought he just made this stuff up or he photo shopped the pictures. But at the end of the book, the jig was up, even though the Ethan that arrived at the house thought he was Ethan, he really wasn't. At the end two cops arrive at the house telling Ethan's mom that the boy in their house is not Ethan because they found the remains of the original Ethan's body near the Canadian border. So after that, the boy in the house who isn't Ethan understood why he couldn't remember everything in the pictures, he usually thought it was because he lived homeless and with his old guardian Ellen who was a drug addict. He thought being in a crack house blinded his memory, or maybe he thought everything he went through was just to much to handle.


When I got to the end of the book I was absolutely confused because I did not understand how any of this can ever happen. I mean the fact that the real Ethan was dead was pretty realistic but I really wanted to know how this random teenager shows up in Minnesota thinking he is someone else, if he isn't Ethan, what I want to know is, who is he? At the very ending "Ethan" runs away when the cops tell the family he isn't Ethan, he feels like he is nothing now, because he created all these amazing relationships with people and started a whole new life just to find out this isn't his life. I really hope there is a sequel because it is one of my favorite books and it kinda ended with just a cliff hanger, so I'm hoping that is gonna happen soon.

Blog post #23: Ditching SPOILED by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan (for now) to read THE HUNGER GAMES, again

Right now I am currently reading, Spoiled, by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. But I am going to ditch this book (for now) to re-read THE HUNGER GAMES!!!!! I felt that Spoiled wasn't really my type of book because it was to normal and plain, I guess to me. It was a realistic fiction book, and I'm not the biggest RF fan. Whenever I read a realistic fiction book I feel like it is probably never gonna happen or I feel like it is just to normal for me to read. I am really into Sci-Fi or Fantasy books, I really like all the action and suspense and it just gets me really interested for some reason. For example, some of my favorite books and series are, obviously, The Hunger Games series, Percy Jackson and The Olympians, Harry Potter, and The Future of Us. 

When I read Spoiled at first, I thought it was pretty boring but I kept reading because some of the best books ever start of pretty plain like for example The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, it started off sorta boring but then it became one of the best books I ever read! I let Spoiled show itself in the first hundred pages, but after I read one hundred pages it still stayed plain so I decided to abandon it. I think the plot line was not as engaging as fantasy and sci-fi books. I think another thing that made me really bored with the book is that it took way too long to explain the whole background of the characters.

I decided to read The Hunger Games again because it is one of my most favorite books EVER. And now that I seen the movie there were so many ideas developing about the characters in my mind. For example, I am starting to think about Cato and the type of character he is. While reading the book for the first time I imagined a tough, cold hearted buff guy, but now that I've seen the movie and how the actor Alexander Ludwig plays Cato, I start to think more about the ruthless and vicious side of him, he is willing to do absolutely anything to get what he wants. I even think he would be willing to kill his family to have power. For example, when Katniss blew up the big pile of food and supplies by the Cornucopia, Cato thought the tribute watching it blew up the food and killed him, immediately. And also I started to think about Clove. Maybe she would have had a chance to win the games if she would have just killed Katniss by the Cornucopia without talking so much, she would have might had a chance to win.