{"id":349,"date":"2023-03-31T00:05:34","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T00:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=349"},"modified":"2023-03-31T00:05:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T00:05:34","slug":"the-odds-arent-ever-in-their-favor-children-and-the-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/03\/31\/the-odds-arent-ever-in-their-favor-children-and-the-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odds Aren’t Ever In Their Favor–Children and the Gov’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMay the odds be ever in your favor.\u201d But what are the odds? Life? Death? Rather, those selected in the draw aren\u2019t your children, letting them live another day. This is the premise of Susanne Collins\u2019 2008 dystopian novel, and later film adaption, The Hunger Games<\/em>, a work that follows teenager Katniss Everdeen and her coming-of-age story while fighting for her life in the Capital\u2019s games, which exist only to prove the power of their institution over the rest of Panem after an uprising. Besides having gone through a Hunger Games <\/em>phase ten years ago (sorry, Twilight), I feel that this series could have an interesting relation to one of the poems we read in class, specifically Caroline Norton\u2019s A Voice from the Factories<\/em>. Norton\u2019s piece focuses on the pain and terror associated with selecting a child to \u201clabour life away\u2026to the receptable for dreary woe,\/The Factory Mill\u201d (l. 343, 346-347). While the children in Collins\u2019 novel aren\u2019t working their lives away in a factory, these two pieces of literature have similar concerns and comments on the role children played in the government and production industries by mere selection and the death of their innocence.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s important that these two works are in conversation because, although they cover fundamentally different concepts, the role of children and the destruction of their innocence by government policies is shared between the two women. These children in each literary work have little to zero autonomy in their life due to government institutions and cultural ideals. In The Hunger Games<\/em>, the children are subject to being reaped for the Hunger Games. This government-sanctioned killing spree pools from children to show the Capital’s power over its subjects and safeguard the future from another uprising against the government’s power. All but one child dies, and the lone victor walks away with riches for their home district, however, these victors are then pawns of the Capital. They are servants who maintain the nationally recognized narrative that the Capital is a generous being, not a villain; subsequently, these victors are never free from their past and the violence they committed for the government.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the children in A Voice from the Factories <\/em>detail the lack of control these children have in their selection to work in the factories to benefit the production industry. Having small hands and bodies, these children are commodities in factories; they can fit into crevasses that men cannot, for one, leading them to be more susceptible to injury and death. However, Norton doesn\u2019t take this route immediately, she instead details each child\u2019s personality and appearance to the reader, then asks them to choose which should go, labour, and suffer, which matches Collins\u2019 process in her novel. These children described are like those in the reaping\u2014the decision as to whom will be working in the factory is something the parent has to make, instead of a government agent. But just like those kids that are reaped and are subject to the Capital in The Hunger Games<\/em>, they exist and serve at the beck and call of the \u201cTaskmaster\u2019s commands\u201d within the factory (l. 414).<\/p>\n

In both works of literature, the role of government institutions heavily plays in children\u2019s lives to promote the advancements of the government by virtually taking the innocent lives of children. Collins and Norton prioritize the lives of children by demonstrating the ease at which they can be disposed of within the governmental system chosen, whether in the Victorian era or in Panem in the near future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMay the odds be ever in your favor.\u201d But what are the odds? Life? Death? Rather, those selected in the draw aren\u2019t your children, letting them live another day. This is the premise of Susanne Collins\u2019 2008 dystopian novel, and later film adaption, The Hunger Games, a work that follows teenager Katniss Everdeen and her … Continue reading The Odds Aren’t Ever In Their Favor–Children and the Gov’t<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}