Many are killed immediately in the arena by others, and one character, who is 12 years old and whom the main character Katniss becomes attached to, dies after a spear is thrown into her abdomen.
At the very least, know that the violent Games, in which children are encouraged to kill each other, is the center of the book (don’t read any further if you want to avoid spoilers)…Īnd all but two characters out of twenty-four die, some in very nasty ways. If you’re a parent who’s wondering whether to take your child next weekend, a quick flip through the book may be the best bet. “A fair reading of ‘ Old Yeller' would likely cause a child to have nightmares of the death of the dog,” Pancoast said. LaSalle stated there is no lesson in this book except if you are a teenager and kill twenty-three other teenagers, you win the game and your family wins,” the minutes from the meeting read, according to a School Library Journal article.Ī school board member, Philip Pancoast, told the SLJ that he considers the book to be average young adult literature. The book was being read aloud in the classroom. In 2010, a New Hampshire mother, Tracy LaSalle, requested at a school board meeting that the first book be removed from her daughter’s seventh-grade classroom because she said her daughter had started having nightmares and that she worried the other children would become too used to the brutality described in the novel. The idea of kids being more mature is what seems to worry some parents, who think children will become desensitized to violence. “I think kids are more mature than they have been over the years… It's not overly gruesome or brutal but it is part of the story in some way,” Hutcherson said. “But I understand if everybody has a different standard for ratings.”Īctor Josh Hutcherson said in an interview with Reuters that he believes the film strikes the right tone because it doesn’t glorify the violence taking place. “I do think the violence and brutality is justified,” Lawrence said. What underlies US inertia on mass shootings? It may be lack of trust. In the “Games” trilogy, it’s a corrupt government that forces the children to compete in the deadly Hunger Games. “It's the violence and the brutality (which) is the heart of the film, because it's what gets the people angry to start an uprising and to start a revolution,” she said. Lawrence told Reuters she thought the violence was acceptable.
#Who plays prim in the hunger games movie
In America, the movie is rated PG-13 for “intense violent thematic material and disturbing images, all involving teens." Star Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film, was asked about the controversy after seven seconds of the film was cut to earn the movie a 12A rating in the UK, a rating that would allow children 12 and older in the theater, with younger children requiring an accompanying adult to gain entrance. The book’s violence, in which many children and teenagers are killed, has been a hot topic since it was released. The movie is based on the book of the same name by Suzanne Collins, which is the first of a trilogy. But many parents may be making the choice soon whether to bring their children to the cineplex when “ The Hunger Games,” the first installment of the dystopian young-adult trilogy about children taking part in a horrible reality show, arrives in theaters March 23. It hardly sounds like an ideal story for pre-teens, or, depending on parental views, some early teens.
Children between the ages of 12 and 18 forced to kill each other in a large arena until only one of them is left standing.