About the Author

Suzanne Collins was born August 10, 1962 and is a television writer and novelist best known as the author of The Hunger Games Trilogy and the Underland Chronicles. Suzanne graduated from Indiana University with a double major in Drama and Telecommunications. She began her career in 1991 as a writer for television shows. In September 2008, Scholastic Press released The Hunger Games which were partly inspired by her father’s career in the Air Force which allowed her to have a more in depth understanding of the effects of war and poverty.

The Hunger Games was on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 60 weeks and Collins was named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people of 2010. In 2012, Collins was announced to be the best-selling Kindle author of all time by Amazon.com. In March 2012, The Hunger Games movie was released, with Collins writing the script adaptation. It had the third-highest opening weekend in history. The Hunger Games Trilogy is available in 50 different languages, with over 18 million copies of the series in print.

Genre

Mockingjay is an example of dystopian literature. Dystopian novels usually depict totalitarian governments that dehumanize their citizens and cause a decline in society. They are often set in the future and have a science fiction element to their stories. Dystopian literature is used to question and examine issues in our society such as politics, technology, caring for the environment, and the inequality between classes. These novels speculate what these issues may look like in the future and can act as a warning to the readers. Some popular dystopian novels include George Orwell’s “1984,” Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World,” and Alan Moore’s “V for Vendetta.”

Setting

Most of the events in the book take place in District 13, a “lost” district of Panem that parted ways with the other 12 districts because of conflicts with the Capitol. It was supposedly destroyed during a battle against the Capitol years before the Games started. However, the people of District 13 gathered and used the limited supply of power that they had in order to start a revolution—they were a nuclear weapon production zone, after all.

By the time Katniss reaches District 13, she realizes how much the place has evolved. Everybody lives underground and it has turn into a strict and stern place. Everybody is given a role in the community and is required to follow a strict schedule. No luxuries are to be found within the district, which makes it difficult for Katniss to consider it as home.