Hypocrisy Theme Analysis

By celebrating and watching the Hunger Games, the citizens of the Capitol suggest that the tributes, drawn from the districts of Panem, don’t deserve the same security and respect that the people of the Capitol do. They suggest that the tributes are beneath them. However, during the course of the Games, many of the competitors prove that they’re more capable of feeling genuine emotion—and acting on it—than the citizens of the Capitol who watch the Games play out on their TV screens. Katniss, for example, pauses in the middle of the Games in order to sing a soothing song for the dying Rue, and she drugs Peeta so that she can risk her own life to bring back medicine for him. The people of the Capitol are prone to exaggerated displays of feeling—laughing and weeping during the interviews with Caesar—but they do nothing based on these feelings. If anything, they enjoy sitting back to be entertained by the suffering on their screens. This is hypocritical on another level: while they lack authentic suffering in their own lives, the citizens of the Capitol demand real pain and death from their entertainment.

The Games also encourage a certain amount of hypocrisy among tributes. In order to maximize their chances for survival, many of the tributes form alliances with one another, even though they know that they will have to kill their allies eventually in order to win the Games. The tributes are also encouraged to put on a show. In Katniss’s case, she acts as if she’s infatuated with Peeta—when in reality, their setting in a cutthroat arena hardly breeds romance. Still, in order to survive, the tributes have to embrace a certain level of hypocrisy.