The Hunger Games

When The Hunger Games movie came out my freshman year of college, I believe that was the tail end of the hype from the Twilight series. After learning that The Hunger Games would be a movie, I wrote it off as another dumb book-to-movie hysteria that would entail bad acting and poor casting. However, the film turned out to be a huge success and more recently the second installment of the series, Catching Fire was released with great success as well. After seeing the first film, I was never given the opportunity to read the book… until now.

I see a TON of similarities between the dystopian society that Suzanne Collins has depicted for us to food inequality that a lot of us see and hear about every day of our lives. I specifically enjoy that the Capitol is a group of powerful, aristocratic people who have the annual Hunger Games to remind the Districts of their oppression.
Much like our own government, the Capitol is corrupt and filled with distrustful and ruthless people who intentionally keep the rich, wealthy and the poor destitute.

Katniss, to me, is depicted as a rough and tumble kind of girl, with the exception of Hollywood’s interpretation of her through the excellent performance by Jennifer Lawrence. I see her as the kind of girl that isn’t violent by nature, but will do whatever it takes to hold her ground when she believes its necessary to do so.

Not only is she tough as nails but also she’s seriously devoted to her family and values her relationship with her sister, something I believe is rare to see and hear about in today’s society, but brings innocence and truth to the plot of this particular story. 
We see Katniss show us her devotion to Primrose when she volunteered as tribute, something that hasn’t been done in a long time in District 12 because they’re notorious for not producing victors.

Food plays a large theme in this novel but relates to our society today in many ways.
For example, in this dystopia, food is not readily available to their citizens. In fact, in this society, they resort to primitive ways to gain their food, like hunting and if they ever need any assistance, their chances of participating in the Hunger Games increase.

This is such a thought-provoking novel and I’m really interested in reading more.  

The Jungle Ch 21-26: A Comparison

Reading Chapters 21-26 of The Jungle really brought back a familiar theory I had about a year ago…

Now forgive me for sounding like a complete nerd for the next few minutes as well as digressing into some deep, but pretty incredible points on xenophobia, “The American Dream” and immigration.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m majoring in Film, Video and Media studies with a minor in creative writing. Since I started my career here at Western, I’ve become incredibly interested in the analysis of plotlines, aesthetics and other various parts of film. Consequently, this behavior has carried over into my game playing. Soon, I found myself analyzing the plotline of Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto and discovered that you’re not just shooting people and stealing cars. I started paying attention to the underlying details that the games had for them and once I discovered them, the reality was striking.

Grand Theft Auto IV focuses on an eastern European immigrant named Niko Bellic who comes to Liberty City, USA (a city that closely resembles New York City) in order to pursue the American dream and forget about his troubles back in his homeland. Niko reunites with his cousin, Roman who goes on and on about the opportunities, the woman and the money that America has in store for them. Niko soon discovers that Roman had embellished the prestige of American life and sees that Roman isn’t living a high life at all and actually resides in a very xenophobic part of the United States. Over the course of the game, Niko and Roman are chased by loan sharks and mobsters and get involved in organized crime themselves to help pay off Roman’s debt to his loaners.

Liberty City, a striking resemblance to New York City, is
the setting for Grand Theft Auto IV

Which is what brings me to my connection of this to The Jungle. After Jurgis returns from his hiatus, he gets involved in a bit of some crime himself by mugging a guy and stealing his money. I connect this to Grand Theft Auto IV because since Niko couldn’t find any work and discovered that talks of the “American Dream” were false, he resorted to violence to get his money, much like Jurgis. I don’t believe this is actually what GTA IV was trying to teach me as a player, but it definitely gave me some insight into how we convey American life to immigrants and how they’re actually treated when coming to America.

The Jungle: Response

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

I’m not sure if our standards for food safety have improved after reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I remember reading parts of the text that said that the animals that they were going to slaughter had died from other diseases and were being packed and shipped out anyway.
Gross.

 The conditions of the residents living in Chicago were horrific. People, including children, were living in overcrowded areas that were infested with vermin and unsafe to live in, also, their neighborhood smelled of feces and rotting animal flesh, calling this portion of Chicago, “packingtown.” By what I read, the family seemed to have been swindled into buying a house under the conditions of it being a rental until it is paid off, simply because if it is considered a rental it would make it easier for people to be evicted.

I can relate a lot of what we read in The Jungle to the group conversations about the book Slaughterhouse. Like the book, Sinclair had depicted people working at extremely fast rates and in miserable conditions to meet some sort of goal. I remember when we had talked about this in class that we addressed the issue of job safety and how this occupation is linked to high cases of depression.
Reading the Wikipedia article on The Jungle, it appears that Jurgis loses his way and eventually becomes a hobo.

Personally, I’m thankful that the book had made significant changes to our sanitation and packaging of our foods but I really don’t think we’ve made significant strides since then on both the grounds of the treatment of our workers and the safety and quality of our food. Still today you hear people discussing the high amounts of hormones and toxins in the beef that we eat on a regular basis from McDonalds, Burger King, etc.

If I can take something away from reading this section of The Jungle, it would be that vegetarianism doesn’t sound so bad now.

SNAP to it! - My Modest Proposal

I went home last Friday to visit my parents back home.
I haven’t seen them since Christmas break and it was almost halfway through the month of February.
After getting home and doing an initial greeting with my parents, I sat down with my father and started to tell him about our class and what our topic is.
I told him how we went to Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes and learned that so many people, roughly 130,000, relied on Loaves and Fishes to provide meals for them and I mentioned how awful it was that the government made huge cuts to SNAP benefits this year.

My Dad is always on top of finances. He said, while Kalamazoo Loaves and Fishes are doing a great thing by providing for over 130,000 people in the county, he pointed out to me that maybe not everyone needed food assistance. Maybe we didn’t consider the possibility of people abusing the system in order to get free food…

We then discussed how that possibility was similar to the government’s justification of cutting SNAP benefits. Maybe people who claim they need assistance are abusing that system also… and as a result of that, the government just said, “Sorry, too many people are sucking us dry and we need to cut back on money.”

Which brings me to my modest proposal:

We should cut all benefits to every assistance program in the United States. That includes: SNAP, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. Way too many people are abusing the system and the government just can’t afford to foot their bill any longer.
As terrible as it sounds, I think it’s the only way to see our state and our country to get back on the right track.

Just think of all the money us citizens will be saving, we’d have more money for our families, for ourselves, we wouldn’t have to work long hours. People will finally get a break from their stressful lives!

…If there’s anyone still alive. 

A Harvest of Shame

Reading Cajas de carton and The Earth Did Not Devour Him was almost a similar reading experience to The American Way of Eating. McMillan’s experience in the California agriculture business was similar to what we read in both texts including Rigoberta Menchu’s testimony. After reading Lindsay’s post a few days ago really made me think about the conditions migrant workers are exposed to including the instance in which the workers are being exposed to pesticides. According to California law, it is illegal to expose workers to crops treated with pesticides until at least 4 hours after the crops have been treated. As I commented on Lindsay’s post, I couldn’t find any physical evidence in the form of a California government webpage.
In Cajas de carton, I think the most heartbreaking part about the story was at the end when the narrator was finally getting adapted to his new life in school and he returns home to find that all of their belongings were stashed away in cardboard boxes, perhaps the reason why the piece is titled, Cajas de Carton.
It was awful to visualize the imagery he depicted of young children, one at the age of 9, collapsing of what appeared to be heatstroke.

When I go to Meijer or Aldi and walk by the produce section, I never can look at it the same way ever again. I always wonder how much sweat, blood and tears went into getting that produce to the shelves of that store. What kind of journey did it take? Who risked their lives or even died for me to have my delicious grapes to eat or fresh iceberg lettuce to chop?

Am I the only one who asks these questions or am I overanalyzing this? By reading these pieces for class, these people were robbed of their peace and their pursuit of happiness.

How ironic for that to occur in the land of the free…  

*For reference on the title of this blog please click here.