4. Why Should Any Of These Kids Form Alliances? Aren't They Mortal Enemies?
It's a fight to the death between total strangers, and yet when Katniss arrives with Peeta to fight in the Hunger Games, she feels like an outsider compared to the others. She watches as the contestants side with one another, and it's even suggested in the second film that every winner knows the other; what kind of get-togethers do all these previous winners have exactly? Do they all just reminisce over how they survived up trees and killed children? In the districts closer to the Capitol, volunteering's just a regular thing. They're trained from birth for the Games; they call themselves "Career tributes" and they see it as an honour to fight for their district. They choose Peeta to join them because he might have information on Katniss. Why's Katniss so important? She scored an eleven in the preliminary tests: they see her as a threat, and after all, it makes more sense to team up to take out the biggest threats of the smaller districts, before all turning on one other. It's not just tactically astute, it's chilling. And these are kids that are brought up simply to know that if they want to survive, they must side with other kids, and pick off the weaker ones. That's as powerful as any other message that author Suzanne Collins has given us; it's a shame it's not alluded to more in the movies.
