Herrera David Herrera English 113B Professor Lawson 5/1/13 Project Text Final Draft Word count: 1080

Imaginary Chains
The hovercraft appeared out of nowhereone moment the sky was empty and the next it was there. It didnt make a sound, but they saw it. A net dropped down on the girl and carried her upthey shot some sort of spear through the boy (Collins 82). Imagine living in a world were you dont know if youre going to live to see the next day. That is that exact struggle that exists in the country of Panem, a country that is highly oppressed by their government. Now you might be thinking well this is only a book and its not real; but what if I were to tell you that events similar to these happen in the real world. In the early 1930s we begin to see an uprising of a government; a powerful government that had a plan to eliminate all the Jews in the world, this was Hitlers Nazi Germany. Very much like the people living in the districts, Jews living in certain areas of Europe under Nazi rule were oppressed, captured, mistreated, and even killed. This shows that Katniss world indeed dealt with issues that our past societies have dealt with like: war, poverty, and a totalitarian government. The Hunger Games have been created to remind the people living in the districts that the government is in control and that they will not tolerate anyone who opposes them. In The Hunger Games they talk about an Avox, which is Someone who committed a crime. They cut her tongue so she cant speakshes probably a traitor of some sort. Not likely youd know her (Collins 77). In this sentence we see that being a traitor isnt something that is acceptable in this country of Panem. Now what I ask myself is, is leaving a certain area to possibly find food such

Herrera a big crime? In my opinion no, it certainly doesnt merit having your tongue cut off and becoming a servant for the rest of your life. During Nazi Rule their was a family called the Franks, according to a website called

Annefrank.org we can see that this family hid in a secret annex for two years. After two years of hiding and not being able to do anything, they were betrayed by someone and sent the Gestapo to find them. They were than arrested and sent to a concentration camp. A concentration camp was very much like the districts, they didnt have the freedom to do what they wanted and if they tried escaping they were most likely killed. And just like the districts how some are worse than others the same goes for these camps. These camps remind me a lot of the reaping that they talk about in the book; the reason why is because out of all those people what are your chances that you would one of the two people that get chosen. In the concentration camps you would wait in a line if you got called to the right youd live to see another day but if you got called to the left you would know that your life was pretty much over at that point. If I could paint you a picture describing what these camps were like id say it would be like walking into hell. Just knowing that your chances of surviving were probably very slim to none and all the pain, suffering, and torture you were going to have to go through probably made a lot of people wish they were dead. As Hitler began to up rise he had this idea to establish this very powerful government that could control everything and eliminate the people he didnt want in this case the Jews. According to an article called Hitlers Final Solution, He had called the Jews a problem and his goal was to eliminate all of the Jews in Europe and eventually the rest of the world (Bergen). In that same article they talk about two things that really caught my attention. One of these things is that while Hitler was in power he began to kill people who were mentally or physically handicap he called this lives unworthy of living. He took the lives of thousands of people just because he thought

Herrera they were Unworthy of living, he had many scientists and doctors working for him why

couldnt they help these people by developing medicine to help these people out. The other thing that caught my attention was how he thought that mass shooting wasnt an effective way to kill the Jews so he decided to begin using gas chambers, which would kill hundreds of people all at one time. All though none of these severe events happened in The Hunger Games we do know that they completely eliminated District 13; they rebelled against the Capitol and the outcome of that was that they were abolished. It doesnt really say how they destroyed District 13 but I would imagine that the death of hundreds was involved. The Hunger Games in a way was unreal yet in another it was very real; it played both a fictional and non-fictional role. The games that tributes participated in was a very brutal way to kill people, the government designed this game so that they could keep their hands clean and say that they havent killed anyone. The Jews that lived through Nazi Germany werent being fooled, they knew exactly what was going on. In The hunger games we see that 22 people died and two survived and in the Holocaust we see that six million people died and their were probably a few thousands who managed to survive. One of the people that survived the holocaust wrote this There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don't lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life (Wiesel). These words reminded me a lot of Katniss, she knew what she had got into it was just matter of how strong she was mentally in order for her to win and survive. The Hunger Games shows us that events such as the ones that happen in the book can really happen in the real world, sometimes we are just ignorant to whats going on around us; in this case it was the holocaust but thats just one of many more mass killings that exist.