I know most of us are giddy teenage girls, which isn't a bad thing. I was a giddy teenage girl myself, not too long ago. But while that goofy, romantic, squealing part of me loved every minute of the book's triangle of tragic affection, I read the series for more than that. If someone asked me for a girly-book, I would not hand them the Hunger Games. I'd hand them... Pride & Prejudice or something. It's not a romance, just has romantic parts, and thank goodness for them. But at it's heart, THG is about something else entirely.

That said, I wondered if people, while reading, came up with things they felt could characterize the entire series. Certain words and images kept popping into mind for me... themes and recurring issues that showed up in a handful of different forms, each unique to the circumstances but all of them related.

So, if you like to ponder things that don't really matter, and you like to write, tell me what themes you discovered in the book. I'll write a few here, but obviously, you don't have to agree with me. :)

Pressure--
I wanted to say "rebellion", but honestly, I don't feel like that was as true as it seems on the surface. The only reason for rebellion is pressure. And it starts at the beginning of their story. Katniss is pressured into breaking the law (hunting), and before that, she's pressured into accepting tesserae, to feed her impoverished family. It wasn't like she sat around before that thinking about how she could stick it to the man... She knew her family needed her to provide food, so she found a way. She's then pressured to volunteer as tribute to save her sister, and pressured as a tribute to perform for an audience. Pressured to smile and twirl at first, and later to kill. The theme isn't confined to book 1, either. Katniss and Peeta both feel a guilty, nagging pressure from within to protect each other, if for different reasons. This motivates so much of what they do-- including their attempted suicide at the end of the 74th games. (I'm wishing now I could come up with a different word for "pressure"-- I've typed it so many times it's starting to lose it's meaning; hate when that happens!) Katniss is ever pressured into making her decisions by higher powers, be it Snow forcing her to convince the world of her undying love for Peeta, or Coin forcing her to be obedient to save him from an unfair trial at the hands of the rebels. Even the whole design of the games, really, is based on forcing the tributes to interact in certain ways-- the waves of fire, the clock design, the "feast", the mutts... Ultimately, their rebellion is a product of the pressure the Capitol puts on the districts to conform to subservient standards. But my favorite, favorite, favorite example of this theme is the books is Effie's completely ridiculous quote about the pearl..."If you put enough pressure on coal, it turns to pearls." That about sums it up. Thanks, Effie.

Anyway, looking forward to your responses! I miss my high school English classes where we actually got to talk about this sort of thing...