You’ve read the books, seen the movie, (some more than once). What’s next?
It’s difficult to find a book that’s of equivalent excitement as your last. There’s a void that needs to be filled and the vampire love triangles won’t fill it.
The growing number of young adults reading dystopian, post apocalyptic books is increasing especially after The Hunger Games became so big. But what makes them so appealing?
“They make you wonder if you could actually survive a society like that,” senior Michaela Rutledge said.
Senior Savannah Brady sees them as an interesting view on the world’s future.
“I think I like them more because of the futuristic idea that our world could become something so much different than I could imagine,” she said.
So could you survive? Would you be able to feed yourself, your family? Would you be able to resist conforming to the ways of the society and strike up a rebellion?
Rutledge thinks so. “I could definitely survive,” she said. “If things got that bad I would join the rebellion.”
Senior Jaycob Loeffler agreed that he would join the rebellion.
“Why would I stand around watching when I could try to change things,” he said. “I would die either way, so I might as well go out with a purpose.”
The characters also drew in the readers.
“I liked how it was a strong female lead, Rutledge said. “She was the one that started everything.”
In a dystopian society such as the one presented in the Hunger Games the world the inhabitants live in is overpopulated and starved of not only food but their rights.
Some find the books for entertainment while others see them reflections of society that is already somewhat similar.
Loeffler said that people believe too many different things and that something like the Hunger Games could never happen; there’s too much good in humanity.
But others believe that the dystopian books mirror our already crumbling world or the way it could turn out to be.
“The morbidity in the books didn’t seem to phase anyone,” Rutledge said. “It reminded me of the things going on in our world that are just as bad as the situations in the book, like the whole “Kony” thing. No one cares anymore, things happened, and the story has lost its power. It’s a little disturbing.”
Other books that echo the ever popular dystopian theme are books like “The Uglies” a series by Scott Westerfield, a series Brady read even before the Hunger Games and the post apocalyptic theme spread.
“I like the plot line of a rebellious fight,” Brady said. “I’m not the lay down and die type, so these books are inspiring in a way that anything is possible.”