Young adult pop fictionEmpathy and the hunger games

Resum

Working within the context of twenty-first century emotional culture, this analysis of the Hunger Games trilogy will focus on the role of empathy as a communicative, cross-cultural narrative tool. The author of this series, Suzanne Collins, transmits a specific message about human commitment as the key to self-preservation and happiness. Although considered a science fiction young adult thriller and categorized as such under YA pop fiction, Collins� work also possesses elements of the universal romance narrative prototype and in this study it will be read as such. The strong emotional pull of The Hunger Games series raises the issue of reader emotional neediness and authorial use of empathy. As occurs with Stephenie Meyer�s Twilight series, reader/character identification and reader empathetic response are cultivated to such an extent that it has fuelled market sales. In other words, reader empathetic response to the series has triggered increased consumption of books two and three because of readers� need to continue �feeling with� the familiar and cherished main characters. By looking into the Hunger Games series and invoking features of its on-going plot and main characters, it is possible to interpret how emotions are being used by the author to transmit a specific ideological agenda and how, ultimately, it is read and �felt� by the reader. In terms of emotions theory, my analysis works on the premise that pop fiction best-sellers cannot be ignored because they accurately reflect a vast area of human emotional life.