The Hunger Games trilogy highlights many important aspects of tyranny and rebellion, the most important of which is that pursuing your values requires freedom.
I read the first book to my (at the time) 16-year-old son and remember closing the last page saying something like, "Well, that was a good reading experience. Nice ending." And not having any intention of reading the rest of the trilogy. Partly, because the arena fight scenes bored me. But my son was adamant we read the whole thing. I'm glad we did. It had enough great stuff to make up for what I didn't care for. The way it all ended was well done (I thought the last chapter was excellent) and I think spoke to the theme you so perfectly summed up as: "pursuing your values requires freedom and is an act of rebellion against those who think they can, or should, control you." That, in one sentence, sums up the trilogy and what I loved about it.
Yes, the twist with them brainwashing Peeta to hate her was quite unexpected and executed so well. Interestingly, I found my favourite scenes in the novels were when they were in their own district (I can't remember the number) — it had a medieval serfdom feel to it that I quite enjoyed for some hard-to-fathom reason. Likewise, I'm not much into mystery novels, but I love the Cadfael novels for their medieval setting.
I read the first book to my (at the time) 16-year-old son and remember closing the last page saying something like, "Well, that was a good reading experience. Nice ending." And not having any intention of reading the rest of the trilogy. Partly, because the arena fight scenes bored me. But my son was adamant we read the whole thing. I'm glad we did. It had enough great stuff to make up for what I didn't care for. The way it all ended was well done (I thought the last chapter was excellent) and I think spoke to the theme you so perfectly summed up as: "pursuing your values requires freedom and is an act of rebellion against those who think they can, or should, control you." That, in one sentence, sums up the trilogy and what I loved about it.
I definitely thought it got better after the first book! Her writing matured, and the ideas came out much more explicitly in the later two.
Yes, the twist with them brainwashing Peeta to hate her was quite unexpected and executed so well. Interestingly, I found my favourite scenes in the novels were when they were in their own district (I can't remember the number) — it had a medieval serfdom feel to it that I quite enjoyed for some hard-to-fathom reason. Likewise, I'm not much into mystery novels, but I love the Cadfael novels for their medieval setting.