Abstract

This paper attempts an examination of the concept of the mechanism of power in Suzanne Collins’ trilogy The Hunger Games. The author conducts an analytical approach to the way power is practiced, the measure that helps establish a clandestine of power relations affecting people’s life, mentality of thinking, politics and even economy.

The introduction delves to present a definition of power and its concept and how it gets activated and why. Power, according to Collins is the backbone and even the elixir of life upon which the very survival of the authoritarian state headed by President Snow depends. The paper goes on to explicate the need for keeping power in place to secure the government’s grip on power. Mechanism of power as shown in the novel works on so many levels. Divide and rule marks the first and most necessary and effective means as a divisive policy aiming at preventing any potential unity among people who might employ this unity to rise up against the totalitarian government. Media and sport and economic factors are used effectively to ensure government’s control on man’s mind, body and soul and intimidate them whenever needed. Collins presents power and its mechanism as the sole relation between people and government in the novel. Absence of democratic rule in Panem, or, American states, leaves power as the only means to describe the social bond between man and state, a bond that is unilaterally respected and practiced.

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