There’s a piece of graffiti on a wall in Palestine. Over the
years since it was painted, it’s been photographed by scores of
travelers and journalists. It reads:

More than bombs, fire, guns or arrows, love is the most
powerful weapon in the Hunger Games. It stirs and feeds the
rebellion. It saves the doomed. It destroys the bereaved. And it
gives even the most devastated survivors a reason to go on.

“Love” is not synonymous with “passion”. Hatred is also a
passionate emotion. When I say “love” here, I mean compassion,
loyalty, empathy, and the bonds of friendship, family, and
romance. All these things are present in Suzanne Collins’
Hunger Games series. So too are greed, selfishness, hatred,
and fear. That the protagonists are able to put stock in love,
even while given so many reasons to hate, is what gives the
Hunger Games a note of hope despite the suffering of the
characters.

The Hunger Games is part of a genre of post-apocalyptic political
fiction, the best known example of which is George Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty-Four. Suzanne Collins has said that Nineteen Eighty-Four
is a book she reads over and over again, and the Hunger Games
shows a great debt to Orwell’s novel and to subsequent variations
on it  …