Home is where the heart is.
But what else defines ‘home’? Do we recognise it by bricks and mortar, or by the relationships the idea of it embodies? The concept of ‘home’ is subtly in perpetual flux throughout The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, whose final filmic adaptation was recently released.
Set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian America, the first-person narrative voices the internal thoughts and extraordinary events in the life of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen. Ruled by the totalitarian government of the Capitol, the world of Panem is split into numbered districts, distinguishable by the produce which they supply to the wealthy Capitol. The greater the distance from the Capitol, the poorer the district, and the Everdeen family inhabits the distant District 12.
Katniss bluntly describes the hardships of her mining district, calling it ‘District 12. Where you can starve to death in safety’. She talks of her community as ‘men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many of whom have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails and the lines of their sunken faces’.
Annual games
Held every year as punishment for an earlier uprising of the districts in a failed revolt against the Capitol, the annual Hunger Games see two child tributes from each district randomly selected to battle to the death. The Games are broadcast to all of Panem, and the districts watch on, anxious for their young, while the Capitol watches in delight, placing bets on who they think will be the Victor, the sole survivor. When Katniss volunteers as a tribute in place of her young sister, her obvious rage at the injustice of her district’s material poverty and the Capitol’s oppression sparks a second revolution.
Justice must be possible
Katniss strives for something better than what she currently calls home, with no surety that anything better is actually possible. She knows nothing different than the deprivations of District 12, and yet she knows that because of all the wrong she sees, there must be a right. Her reaction to witnessing and experiencing injustice is to long for justice, a response innate to humanity. As the trilogy progresses, Katniss comes to embody for others the justice they feel must be possible, and she becomes a national symbol of rebellion against the unjust Capitol. Her actions and behaviour in the arena are defined by this unaccountable hope for a better world. When broadcast to the rest of Panem, the populace catches her vision, recognises its own desire for change, and unites to stage a revolution. Unlike Christians, Katniss and the people of Panem do not have the certain promise of a redeemed and perfect home, and her reluctant role as a national symbol of hope is no substitute for a Saviour.
Imagining home
What will the perfected ‘home’ look like? ‘Katniss, there is no District 12’, her friend Gale Hawthorn informs her at the end of Book Two, Catching Fire. Physical home has been destroyed by the Capitol, and she will spend the entirety of the next book displaced. ‘Home’ cannot be just bricks and mortar, as she continues to work towards it despite this displacement. The romance arc of the trilogy concerns Katniss, Gale and Peeta Mellark. Peeta is something of a saviour for the Everdeens, rescuing them from starvation years before. Katniss voices a significant realisation in the first instalment: ‘the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realised how much I don’t want him to die. […] And it’s not just that I don’t want to be alone. It’s him. I do not want to lose the boy with the bread.’ This introduces another aspect to ‘home’ – it must not only be a place where justice reigns, but also where this is lived out in relationship. Although in the first book she admits: ‘if he dies, I’ll never go home, not really’, she doesn’t realise until the end of the trilogy that it is Peeta’s presence which will for her define where ‘home’ is.
Not a system but a relationship
At the conclusion, ‘home’ is not a building, or a place, although Katniss does return to District 12 and a Victor’s mansion. After all the trauma and longing, the resolution – home – is found to be not just a transformed political system, but also a relationship. Katniss returning ‘home’ to a redeemed relationship with Peeta is a shadow of the ultimate relationship we in our world are to be saved into. Those who don’t yet know Christ will yearn for and search after that home all the days of life. Until we are face to face with God, we will long for it – he is where our home is.
