The Third Ten Million Years is a weekly Precipitate feature exploring the mysteries of life on a single planet, as seen through a single pair of eyes in a single body composed of the same fine material as the deserts of Mars.
Katniss hunts in the woods beyond the borders. Courtesy of Lionsgate Entertainment.
I planned for this post to return to a discussion of climate science. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve specifically discussed climate change, and there have been some interesting studies coming out as of late. In addition to this relevant research, there have been some fascinating maps providing a visualization of our energy system and greenhouse gas emissions. It would have been an interesting post.
Instead, I’m going to talk about The Hunger Games. I finished the trilogy this past week, and the series was okay. This isn’t going to be a book review, though; I’m not interested in peddling on behalf of Suzanne Collins. Rather, there is an idea that runs through the background of The Hunger Games and that ties into my previous post about returning to the rough edges of American Romanticism, an idea that I think provides a rich context to the project of Third Ten Million Years.
What interested me in Collins’s dystopic future America is that, to a lover of both the actual wilderness and the idea of wild spaces, there was something attractive about Panem—the post-apocalyptic America in which the series is set. Most of the North American continent appears to have returned to wild control, with seemingly the entire West off the grid. Outside the districts is land untamed, and time in those spaces is freedom from the tyrannical day-to-day life of the characters, none of which is unusual in American literature. But this is classic American Romanticism, where borders are crossed and nature unhinged is encountered. The woods in The Hunger Games differ from the woods in a lot of recent fiction. In HG, wild spaces inherently hold potential danger; such danger comes from the tyrannical plot points, but also from the unknown woods themselves. That’s something that easily gets lost in most contemporary representations of nature.
Of course any appeal The Hunger Games has in its treatments of the wild does not extend to the dictatorial fascist government and the murdering (and murdering and murdering) of children that’s ever-present in the series. The through-line plot in the books is one of the least interesting elements. But there is a richness in the series-something I’ve noticed in other young adult series of late-which relies on a strong mixture of the attraction and danger of wild spaces.
Last week I mentioned how the notion of writing and talking about American wilderness has become a “pseudo-inspirational enterprise.” This is not to be inherently criticized, but it seems that we are at best providing an over-simplified reduction of what the wild is really like. Such simplification is part of our national identity. When we Europeans showed up on the new continent, the woods were terrifying. William Bradford found a “hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men.” Though this interpretation may seem extreme, it is not hard to understand, for, quite literally, going into the woods could mean death from any number of unknown causes. The fear of the untamed wild brought us “Young Goodman Brown” and a host of other stories meant to remind us of the danger of the woods.
Such an impulse was understood and countered by the romantic Americans of the 19th century. Today, I think we have gone too far in the opposite direction. I celebrate our National Park System as among the greatest assets the American government has given its citizens, but I worry that Ken Burns has transformed the parks from the opportunity to encounter the face of nature into an immovable photo collage of the past. Perhaps this is unfair, but the world is changing and our perceptions of wild spaces are, too. If Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, today we go to the woods to see nature served to us on a platter. How else to explain developing a “luxurious wilderness destination” resort on an untouched island that will facilitate “extreme wildlife encounters?” For the record, I’m no different; I would to visit that resort. I’m sure it would be a breathtaking experience.
Wild spaces should inspire us, but they should also make us at least a little afraid. Humans are visitors to the wild spaces, and we are meant to be cautious. I glimpsed that caution and excitement in The Hunger Games trilogy. This may seem a lot to read from a tertiary, perhaps inconsequential or accidental element of a young adult post-apocalyptic pop-fantasy series, but the great thing about novels is that they say what they say regardless of the author. In a series about terror and fascism and propaganda, there still remains the undercurrent of that most American trait: the danger and sacredness of the woods outside our borders.
Christopher Zumski Finke, Staff Blogger