Where do you seek entertainment when you’re through with sentimental romance? In graphic violence, perhaps?

War, persecution, abuse, suffering -- these are common themes in literature and I am not overly disturbed by them, at least in principle. Some happy stories—as much as I love them—can seem disconnected from reality, and escapism’s comfort is too fleeting to satisfy.

Dark themes are a part of life, and even if they are difficult to face they can be invaluable for testing character, proving virtue, and drawing out what is most beautiful in human nature, as well as the worst. In teen literature, it all depends how they are dealt with.

If a story about evil, abusive powers provides a context for characters to choose how to respond and bear responsibility for that choice, it offers something invaluable. Even if characters go along with the evil, the narrative must not absolve them from the responsibility of acting in that way.

If, on the other hand, the narrative claims that the characters had no choice but were forced to act that way by circumstances, then it only helps to make readers more confused.

If in addition a novel turns violence into gratuitous entertainment, it only reinforces negative themes and desensitises an age group that should be building their emotional intelligence, not killing it.

That the celebration of violence and social pathologies has reached critical mass in teen fiction was highlighted by a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The writer notes that “kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things” in young-adult novels and that profanities are “so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.”

No doubt there are worse examples of this literature, but in my view the ultra-best-selling series and soon to be movie The Hunger Games, is bad enough.

In a dystopian vision of the near future, Hunger Games is a terrifying reality TV show where twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to compete to the death. The Capitol has imposed the games on the children of the twelve districts under its control to remind them that rebellion is futile. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to take her sister’s place, and though she sees it as a death sentence, she is determined to survive for the sake of her family.

Author Suzanne Collins conceived the idea for Hunger Games while channel surfing between reality TV shows and news coverage of an actual war zone. It is not a particularly uplifting theme, yet Collins has many readers convinced that the book’s ethics are clear: it is a critique of the violent injustice it describes. I am not convinced.

Survival

In the games, survival is the ultimate good and death the greatest evil; our heroine never questions this. She and the other characters do whatever it takes to survive, and for games contestants this means killing. Katniss is the good girl so she is subtle at first, dropping an insect nest on someone’s head so they swell up and die "naturally", or destroying another group’s food so they will starve. Her district companion Peeta confesses that “to murder innocent people costs everything you are”, yet indirectly and later directly, both he and Katniss still do it.

The experience is like reading a first hand account of a Nazi soldier doing horrible things to others in order to stay alive. The fact is, sometimes survival is not the most important thing and it is necessary to be prepared to die rather than kill someone else.

In Collins’ books, survival only loses its appeal when suffering makes death more appealing than life, justifying the suicide and mercy killing which are rife in the series. Towards the end the rebels—including Katniss—carry a suicide bomb in case they or their friends are caught. Failure to kill a captured friend is seen as a failure of friendship, and Katniss’ reluctance to use it is a sign of her weakness. Darkness–1; Characters–0.

Desensitisation and “romance”

Next there is brutal desensitisation so the characters won’t get so hurt (it is not acknowledged that this too is a form of harm), and romance used as a tool of survival.

The games are televised and sponsors must be sought to provide the food and medicine contestants will need to survive. Body appearance is therefore important: each contestant has a stylist who must first assess them without clothes (Katniss ‘bravely’ resists the urge to cover herself), and then a full body wax makes them camera-ready. This is probably normal for reality TV, but don’t tell me it’s brave.

At first, the other contestants mock Katniss with explicit offers and gestures because she is so "pure". But soon she "toughens up" and is able to laugh rather than blush at their provocative displays, and shows less of a concern to protect herself. As Katniss is "built up" (broken down), Collins seems to enjoy describing the loss of innocence; it’s quite nauseating.

From the start, a fake relationship between Katniss and Peeta is played up to win sponsorship. "One kiss equals one pot of broth", so Katniss maintains a star-crossed lovers’ routine with long, lingering kisses and imaginary tears, and later the pretence that they are married and that she is pregnant.

Peeta himself falls for it, but Katniss is just confused about what she feels. This doesn’t stop her from kissing, hugging and "comfort' bed sharing with Peeta, nor prevent her kissing her old friend Gale "to make up for all the kisses I’ve withheld, because it doesn’t matter anymore, and because I’m so desperately lonely I can’t stand it." This petty, selfish, mockery of love is all that is served up in Hunger Games.

And so we have it; not only did Katniss embrace her progressive desensitisation and confusedly false romance, but the book makes her a hero for it. Darkness–2; Characters–0.