The Hunger Games - How to Deal with Darkness & Despair

 Darkness and despair, death and decay, tragedy and trauma—these are things we see in the world daily, so of course, they make it into all forms of media. In fact, they play an integral role in a story. After all, a story without some sort of conflict isn’t very exciting. Our characters must face trials and tribulations during their arc to finally grow. We all understand this. Frodo must face the overwhelming evil and temptation of the One Ring. Harry Potter must face Voldemort and his Death Eaters and their desire to destroy humans. The children in the Chronicles of Narnia must face all sorts of evil brought into the world by Jadis (The White Witch). But then comes the question we often ponder: how do we handle that darkness properly? How can we portray a brutal reality even in a clean story? We will dive into that topic with the help of Suzanne Collins' masterful trilogy, The Hunger Games.

REALIZATION OF IMPACT

First things first: know what darkness is in the story. 

What sensitive issues are we dealing with? Let’s look at Hunger Games to see what we have. Among other things, Hunger Games contains elements of extreme poverty and starvation, violence and murder amongst children and innocents, slavery, war, mental illness, addictions, and prostitution. There are a lot of heavy things to deal with. Now, this might seem way too extreme off the bat. How could anyone ever be okay with reading a book like this? But remember, as we discussed in our middle-grade post, even children’s books deal with topics such as these, with Chronicles of Narnia touching on slavery and war. Of course, since The Hunger Games is a young adult book series, the issues are dealt with more up front, but the same ideal applies. Know your audience. Authors must recognize two key things when weaving in these elements. 1) Just because you think something is not a big deal doesn’t mean others won’t, and 2) How do these elements impact people?  

To properly weave these heavy elements into your story, you need to realize their true weight and appreciate how certain elements can have an offputting and/or emotional impact on your reader. 

LESS IS MORE

Again, as we discussed in our middle-grade blog post, people understand the darkness in a story very well, so it comes down to how you portray it. For a children’s book, most things are only hinted at, and not much is touched on in the same way as a young adult book or an adult book can—for example, death. Characters might die in a middle-grade story, but it is usually “off-screen,” as it were, or not described in much detail—the same for violence. The descriptions are minimal, primarily bloodless (obviously with a few exceptions), and not graphic. 

However, you have a choice to make in young adult or adult stories. How much of the darkness are you going to portray, and how much do you want to only hint at? For example, The Hunger Games, while violent with many brutal deaths, isn’t just a senseless bloodbath throughout the whole story. It doesn’t need to describe every single wound in the most gruesome of detail to be effective. The same goes for the other dark elements in the story. Finnick’s situation is a perfect example of less is more. A few hints dropped about him and Katniss are enough to imply what Finnick has gone through at the hands of the Capitol. We don’t need it described to us. We don’t need it shown. Our imaginations are able to fill in all the horrible blanks in perhaps a more effective way than if everything was shown outright. 

Especially if you want to keep your stories cleaner but don’t want to lose the reality of life and the true darkness of this world, less is most definitely more. Actions speak louder than words as they say, however words can imply just as much as an action. 

Never underestimate the power of a reader to pick up on context and hints. 

THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR

Every good story has that one part where all hope is lost, where the characters must face the worst of the world, whatever form that takes. There are several moments of this in The Hunger Games, especially in the last book. Katniss, our leading lady, must face the true horrors of death and destruction, the worst of humanity, the true terrors of the Capitol. She must witness children slaughtered, lose friends, loved ones, her District, and walk the line between two evils. She feels crippling fear. Desperation. Fury. Sorrow. 

Despair. 

While writing, you might be tempted to skirt around these emotions. You might try to keep everything light, avoiding the heavy emotions because they are painful to write, you don’t enjoy bringing your character to that place, or think it might be too much for people to handle. 

But while you might not be writing a story with the level of heavy topics as The Hunger Games, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have moments akin to them. If your characters breeze past all the pain and suffering with an unwavering smile, they are just that—a character. If you add these human reactions in, however, not only does it make your characters more realistic, but it will also bring your reader closer to your characters. 

Most of the time, it is these raw, emotional moments that we as humans relate to that draw your readers in and truly connect them with your story. 

VICTORY IN LIGHT AND LIFE

But just because we show our characters despair and the story's darker moments does not mean it should stay that way. One way I mark good stories is how they end. I am not saying that every ending should be all sunshine and rainbows. What I am saying is that the darkness and despair should not consume the ending. The Hunger Games is, again, an excellent example of this. It has a beautifully open, bittersweet ending. Katniss has not fully recovered. She will never fully recover from what she went through. But her closing words reveal the mindset of the end of the story perfectly:

“But one day I’ll have to explain about my nightmares. Why they came. Why they won’t ever really go away.

I’ll tell them how I survive it. I’ll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything because I’m afraid it could be taken away. That’s when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I’ve seen someone do. It’s like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. 

But there are much worse games to play.”

― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

Lord of the Rings has a bittersweet ending, as does Chronicles of Narnia, The Wingfeather Saga, and How to Train Your Dragon. They are the kinds of endings that make our hearts ache yet satisfy us at the same time. While a “And they lived happily ever after” works for many a story, don’t be afraid to give your characters a bittersweet happily ever after.

Whether happy or bittersweet, whether characters die in the end or they all come out unscathed, it is this simple fact to celebrate at the end of the story.

They lived through it.

I know not everyone’s life ends in joy. However, stories are meant to be an escape for the reader, a chance to experience a whole new reality through another’s eyes. While tragedy is the common thread that ties a reader and a character together in either sympathy or empathy, what a reader longs for is that happy ending—a sliver of hope for themselves that they can carry out of the book and into their life. 

If you pour pain, suffering, and misery into your story with no reprieve and no hope in sight, you are bringing no benefit to anyone, in fact those stories usually do more harm than good. 

In conclusion, make sure that you properly understand what elements you are dealing with in your story, how many of the heavy elements you want to include, and how to balance those with your positive elements. Once you have that nailed down, you will be closer to crafting a story steeped in reality but basking in the light of hope.