“The Hunger of Transformation in Storytelling”
In my extended essay, I will further discuss the question of how did certain literary techniques in the first series of the trilogy “Hunger Games” such as point of view, symbolism, imagery, and motif translate into the film “Hunger Games” of the 2012 adaption and create diverse impacts on the audience via distinct mediums. To achieve this goal, I will distinguish the difference and similarity between the original message embedded in each work from creators and the audience’s perspectives, and to analyze the distinct use of literary devices and film techniques, and their impact on the audience.
Introduction
The Literature “Hunger Games” trilogy was originally written by author Suzanne Collins, with a total of three books in the series. The author builds the story of the entire book based on a fictional society, with a dystopian invention of the game “Hunger Game” as a major setting. The Antagonists of the story, who are the leaders of the utopian society “Capitol”, launch the Hunger Games annually in the story to reinforce other districts citizens’ sole patriotic belief in Capitol. The Hunger Game has a set of inhumane game rules, and citizens are obliged to comply with them. The game picks two citizens from each district each year as tributes to participate in the game among 12 districts. The players are forced to kill each other in the game, and the winner will be the only person who survived in the wild forest of slaughter with zero tolerance of rebellious spirit. Katniss is the main protagonist, and she becomes a tribute to play the game voluntarily to prevent her younger sister Prim, who is selected as a tribute originally from participating. Katniss wins the seventy-fourth Hunger Games with her partner Peeta from the same district. The setting of the game carries out the antagonists’ distorted social values, and ultimately delivers multiple topics of humanity, the spirit of revolution, political manipulation and more. The series of literary works “Hunger Games” has been later transformed and adapted as a recreated fantasy film directed by Gary Ross. The film remains loyal to the central theme and setting of the story written originally in the book, and the most distinct contrast between the two works is the varied storytelling methods, presented by the use of separate mediums. The two works create nuanced impacts on the audience through the translation of literary devices’ effects into film conventions. The various creative transformations and combinations of the storytelling techniques paint a new and unique story based on the original work’s essence.
Targeted Audience
Both the series of books and the film has an eminent influence on the general audience, and both mediums employ various techniques to deliver their central messages and philosophy. The book and the film both impact the audience and communicate effectively based on the textual description and visual representation. According to Curwood, “[t]he relationship between literature, literacy, and technology is evident in how adolescents engage with” (Curwood 417). The artworks attracted a large group of the teen audience, and comparably the book and the film all have its shared impact and distinct use of mediums and literary techniques. The shared techniques are represented as symbolism, diction, imagery, and setting.
Point of view & characterization
The variations in the usage of point of view between the book and the film shape the main character distinctly, meanwhile bringing varied impacts to the audience in contrast. To be more specific, the book author unfolds the story by narrating from the main character, Katniss’s first-person perspective. By narrating the story from a first person’s point of view, the author is able to embed the speaker’s internal thoughts, growths, and personal reactions towards conflicts in the novel which is unavailable to other characters but only to the readers specifically. In the novel, Katniss directly expresses her emotions toward her experiences and the utterance of her emotions closely connected herself with the audience as a vivid character with strong feelings. The general audience can then resonates with Katniss’s feelings. At the beginning of the story, she addresses her fear of attending Hunger Games directly: “I was too frightened to venture into that rough, gritty place alone” (Collins 28). In contrast, Katniss did not express any of her internal fears or loneliness of attending the Hunger Games in the film, that the audience is unable to perceive her unwillingness and insecurities to venture the game due to Katniss’s consistent detached facial expressions, and the absence of communication between her and other characters about her internal feelings. The limited perspective in film builds her as a character who is calm and emotionally detached from the crisis initially. With the limited internal perspective provided in the film, the audience perceives Katniss as a character who conceals her internal thoughts and emotions, and her internal world remains mysterious. By including specific internal descriptions in the novel, the readers are able to witness the dynamic growth of a character from within, whereas the film focuses on constructing the flow and tension of the story by presenting the external conversations between each character. Katniss is nostalgic of her family in the book, and the author represents the weight of her family and its personal influence by narrating the first-hand internal thoughts either toward her father: “[t]he numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs” (26), or her sister: “[a]nd I love her more than anything” (129). The film does not include an explicit connection between her and her father, and the love she has for her sister is carried out by the direct physical interactions. The internal emotions of a character in the film are hidden under the eyes of the actors and the audience receives the knowledge of their internal worlds via the character’s physical presence and direct interactions toward conflicts. The film urges the audience to focus on the character’s final decisions, in order to create a greater force of tension that drives the audience to continue watching.
In the middle of the story’s plot, Katniss gains the antagonist’s attention during the Tribute’s ability assessment by shooting an arrow at the feast on their table. The film and the book portray her characteristics differently to the audience, that in the book she blames herself for her behaviors with frustration, and worries about her future with self-doubts by reflecting rhetorical questions. Katniss goes through a number of internal struggles of her confusion toward making the right decision: “Now I’ve ruined everything...What was I thinking, shooting at the Gamemakers?” (103) and “I should have stayed and apologized…[b]ut instead I stalked out of the place in the most disrespectful manner possible” (184). However, Katniss is perceived as calm, self-assured, dispassionate and justified of her own decisions in the film. The original novel is written in the main character’s first-person perspective, which depicts the main character’s internal thoughts and spirits in-depth, and limits the readers from looking at the world from a different perspective. Vice versa, the film has fewer descriptions of the main character’s internal thoughts but provides many other available perspectives visually.
Despite the exclusion of detailed internal thoughts of a character in the film, the film allows the audience to experience the story visually from an unlimited god perspective. In the book, there are no descriptions of what is going on in Capitol’s game control center, and the context of conversations between antagonists because the narrator is unaware and unable to access the perspectives of the capitol without herself being present in the scene. As the film viewers, we can receive a clearer understanding of the external conflicts between characters, by viewing the other characters’ experiences. The film narrates the story by bringing the audience into scenes that Katniss is not able to experience in the novel. Therefore, the audience can observe every character’s desires from an unlimited perspective. On page 172 of the book, Katniss experiences a forest fire, but the readers do not know the causes of the fire. At the same plot in the movie, the film shows that it is the antagonist from the Capitol who sets the fire.
Before the official starting point of the game, the movie brings the audience to view the responses of other characters, such as Katniss’s family’s reaction to herself while watching the television — which the book is not able to provide such various perspectives outside of the first-person narration. The film is also able to create a visual format of a television show streaming the Hunger Games, that the audience is able to be involved in the story from the citizens’ perspectives in the story. The book effectively ties the satirical topic of how the media retells the inhumane events as entertainments in our daily lives, without acknowledging the responsibility to deliver moral social norms to the audience. By presenting a visual and realistic television show in the film, the film is able to exaggerate the impact of the entertainment industry’s superficiality in society and lead the audience to reflect on themselves from a viewer's perspective. Along with the shift in perspective, the subtle change in the character’s actions toward each other also influenced the audience’s impressions on each character differently. In the novel, Katniss asked Haymitch, one of her sponsors for medical support during the game by whispering signals for help. In contrast, the film brings viewers closer to the actor’s situation by visually presenting the physical pain that Katniss experiences. Katniss’s power of endurance and strength demonstrated under extreme pain influenced Haymitch’s sympathy and respect in the film. Haymitch negotiates with other people in the Capitol to encourage them to sponsor and help Katniss. This subtle change in perspective and content allows the audience to be also impacted by Katniss’s strength outside of her internal feelings, which is not presented in the film and allows the audience to observe Haymitch’s point of view aside from the first-person narration.
Literary techniques into visual effects
The author deliberately utilizes figurative language to depict scenes to the audience. To begin with, one of the frequently used techniques in the book is imagery. The book connects the readers to engage with the character’s feelings by telling the story with descriptions of human senses. The literary technique of imagery refers to the textual employment of the human senses of order, vision, and perception to create a vivid image and draws realistic human feelings from the text. This literary technique has been exaggerated and transformed in the film, that the sound and color from the text is directly illustrated to the audience. During the Hunger Games, Katniss cut down killer bee’s honeycomb as a strategy to save herself from the opponent’s death threats, and the author stresses the pain she experiences from tackling this dangerous challenge to the audience by describing: “[t]he swelling. The pain. The ooze” (191), and “[t]he dizziness has subsided and while my left ear is still deafened, I can hear a ringing in my right, which seems a good sign” (225). The author presents Katniss’s pain to the readers by describing the sound and image textually, whereas the film is able to communicate the human senses of sound and image directly to the audience based on its unique technological anility. In the above portion of evidence from the book, the film inserts sound effects of the bees along with the scene and uses visual effects to distort and blur the scene from the actor’s physical first-person perspective to the audience. Rather than showing texts in the book, the film projects the sound of tinnitus three-dimensionally via various soundtracks, which brings the audience into the body of the main character and strikes the viewers’ physical senses with a technological approach. The novel starts introducing the fear of the characters by introducing the associating events: “[t]his is the day of reaping”, and Katniss’s sister “... must have had bad dreams and climbed in which our mother” (3). Meanwhile, the movie introduces the scene of the actor, Prim, waking up from nightmares and screams into the audiences’ ears directly. These approaches present the character’s situation and bring the physical feelings realistically to the audience, that the context becomes visualized realistically with the attachment to human senses, and provide fewer spaces for imagination as opposed to the book.
The film uses the stylistic device of the motif in the film and associates it with several other film techniques of sound, color, and script to reinforce the message from the usage literary motif in the book creatively. A motif is a recurring, repetitive idea, symbol, or subjects within a literary form, and each time it appears with varied formations. In the book, the author introduces the symbol of Mockingjay, a fictional bird species, that is embedded in recurring plots. This technique has been strengthened and developed in the movie. According to the book “Film techniques in the art of the novel” written by Sanford Radner, that a symbol “is introduced with the following dynamic image, a symbol which recurs throughout the series in association with this character” (Radner 47). The movie assigns realistic repetitive sound rhythm of the birds, as well as the presence of the Mockingjay pin, presents in the rural areas’ scenes to make the message memorable for the audience. In the book, the Mayor’s daughter madge gives Katniss the pin, and Katniss sees it as a symbol of family protection: “[i]t’s like having a piece of my father with me, protecting me” (Collins 43). The text provides the reader space to imagine the object freely, and the symbol’s significance is further enhanced through the use of motifs. Later in the book, the book introduces the bird’s singing voice in the woods repetitively by introducing the voices within characters’ dialogues and environmental descriptions: “A Mockingjay repeats the melody to me” (Collins 232). The bird Mockingjay physically lands on the bench on page 237, whereas the film does not include scenes of Mockingjay’s physical presence, but rather choose to focus on playing the recurring melody of the birds’ singing thoroughly. The film utilizes the technique of symbolism via direct visual representation. Visually, the symbol of the pin is designed into a specific shape and structure that leaves the audience less space to imagine the object itself. Its impression is shifted from text into a visual representation, which is iconic in a different medium. A fixed text is transformed into a dynamic image for visual objectification. The original textual strategies provide a common space for the filmmakers to recreate, and by objectifying phrases into visual images the symbol can have a stronger impression in the audience’s mind.
The creators of both works depict the relationships between the two characters, Peeta and Katniss differently to the audience. In the book, Katniss is able to tell stories from her memories in the flash backorder of the chronological narration. The author uses imagery as well as the first person perspective’s analepsis to portray the relationship between Katniss and Peeta: “when I passed the baker’s, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming I felt dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen door. I stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain interfered...I can never shake the connection between this boy, Peeta Mellark, and the bread that gave me hope” (29-32). Their relationship in the movie is more detached and merely in a state of stalemate, but in the book, Katniss expressed her connection with Peeta internally. Due to the limitation of the first person’s narration in the film medium, the film creators choose to present the disordered chronological story by inserting the visual scenes of the flashback in between the original time settings of the story. The film distinguishes the analepsis and the story’s developing a timeline by using contrasting overall color arrangements of the scene. The film tells the story from the above quotation by showing the interactions between Katniss and Peeta from a third person’s perspective, and the overall color scheme is adjusted into the complexion of green undertone to stand out from the original story timeline’s overall pale, grey tone. The film translates the actor’s internal desires of comfort, food, and hope by leading the actor’s desperateness to grapple resources within her eyes focus on the bread in an abominable outdoor shooting location. The analepsis scene also repeats itself throughout the film as a motif.
The film further transforms the literary effects of exaggeration, imagery, and atmosphere by applying the conventions of visual repetition and sound arrangements. In the book, the author constructs the story with the depiction of the surrounding setting’s atmosphere: “[t]he opening music begins. It’s easy to hear, blasted around the Capitol. Massive doors slide open revealing the crowd-lined streets” (68). This portion of description creates a solemn and systematic mood of the Capitol in the readers, likewise, the introduction of the phrase “opening music” leads the audience to imagine the environment that the characters involved in. The film conveys the according scene at 0:31:00, where the tension constructed in the book by atmosphere and imagery is reinforced by the decisive arrangement of the background music. The director delivers a solemn mood by associating specific instruments in the background. The created grave and utopian mood in the literature is presented by the sound of the bass drum in the background. The film techniques of color arrangement and sound effects work collaboratively to express the textual plots’ descriptions.
Crops, scripts, & creators’ challenges
The book is a dystopian novel, and the dystopian theme is expressed in the film by utilizing crops and setting an imaginary society base on the author’s original context and literary effect. According to Rowland, the author and artist tend to use less natural creatures in utopian settings to leave spaces for imagination and to focus on advanced and urban technologies. There are distinctions as well as commonplace between the narration of the dystopian theme in novels and films, and The Hunger Games film achieved this expression of the dystopian theme in depth. Several methods such as the utilization of advanced technology crop, darker and less saturated color tones and palettes that correspond with the major atmosphere created by the author via imagery, diction, tone, plot, and atmosphere. In this film, there is a clear and dichotomous separation between the scenes of natural creatures, and urban utopian cities with advanced technology. This separation of crop settings reinforces the social, economic, and moral difference between the Capitol and other segregated impecunious districts, such as district 12. The film applied the drama devices of the level to express the segregation between people of each class level and identities in the society from the theme in the original book written by the author.
The scripts between characters are shortened more concisely in order to maintain the tension of the story within a given time range. The film also presents its coherence with the literature by extracting the exact quotations from the book as actors’ script. For instance, Peeta says “You know what my mom said to me...she meant you!... Shoot straight” (98-100) both in the book and the movie exactly to build a solid and consistent characterization.
The book and the film share a common goal to keep the audience to read and watch the story consistently, hence the construction of conflict and tension is essential to inspire the audiences’ curiosity and ponder the story itself. The Hunger Games in the book achieved this by expressing intense story plot literary, building a world with complex characters that develop internal and external conflicts with the world. The challenge for the author is to apply fictional writing knowledge in order to strike an emotional chord, building tensions, and draw the audience's attention on their subjective opinions along with the character’s experiences. As for the film, the director achieves this by creating an appropriate paste in the movie to narrow the story, to cooperate the music with the scenes to create tension, and to elicit actors’ potential acting skills to help deliver the essential characterization from the novel. The foundation of transforming the book into a film is to understand the intentions of the author, and the central theme that the artist desires to deliver.
Theme & Medium’s Impacts
The literature and the film share a common theme about rebellion but deliver it differently based on the author and film-maker’s varied intentions. The author’s tone is optimistic and highlights the importance of collaboration in the game’s plot. The book’s targeted audience is young adults, thus the author intends to encourage teenagers to rebel against the injustices with hope optimistically in real-life. However, the film focus on alluding the topics of political manipulation, and the dark side of human nature such as prejudice, will to slaughter, and class discrimination in the society. The tension in the film emphasizes the game’s competitiveness, instead of collaboration which the book focused on. Both works convey the central message that one must remain humane and dignified even under dehumanizing conditions. The mediums of film and literature have distinct narrative styles and serve as different languages to the audience. The film provides all scenes for the audience with fewer spaces for imagination, whereas the book demands the reader’s active participation.
Conclusion & Evaluation
Both the novel and the film build powerful connections with its audience and communicate the creators’ essential messages by using a diverse array of techniques and conventions to strike an emotional chord of the viewers based on its original story. The creativity in constructing a fictional novel, and in using the availability of technology in the film both brings the work to connect with the readers’ and audiences’ hearts. No matter which medium the artwork is in, the creators are simply employing unique storytelling techniques to tell an impactful story to the audience, and to lead the audience to reflect on the central themes and understand the creators’ purposes. Via distinct mediums, audiences are able to perceive a diverse range of information and emotional responses from varied perspectives. The effect and connection between each work are interrelated, and the transformation from literary techniques to film conventions is inspired by the author and the director’s eagerness to tell a stirring story that leads the audience to further reflections on themselves and the society.
As a writer, I recognize the limitations of my analysis: when I am speaking of the audience’s perspective, I am citing my own subjective perceptions of the work, and its impact on myself. My work is limited by a single perspective, in which my partial expression is biased without the extension and inclusion of other audiences’ opinions. In the future’s investigation, I can improve on analyzing conventions’ impacts on the general audience by conducting more research, including the influences on broader groups of audiences. Overall, I can reach further beyond my personal perspectives and opinions for sophisticated and inclusive analysis.
Works Cited
Curwood, Jen Scott. “‘The Hunger Games’: Literature, Literacy, and Online Affinity Spaces.”
Language Arts, vol. 90, no. 6, 2013, pp. 417–427. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/24575002.
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic Inc., 2008.
Ross, Gary, director. The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games, Lions Gate Home Entertainment, 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvU1MnB_dAc.
Hughes, Rowland. “The Ends of the Earth: Nature, Narrative, and Identity in Dystopian Film.”
Critical Survey, vol. 25, no. 2, 2013, pp. 22–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42751032.
Radner, Sanford. “Anthony Powell: Film Techniques in the Art of the Novel.” College
Composition and Communication, vol. 15, no. 1, 1964, pp. 46–49. JSTOR,
Written Analysis by Jiacheng (Tiffany) Wang