The Hunger Games and The Road Since the beginning of humanity, one of the common goals is survival. Darwin coined, “Survival of the fittest” (adapting to our surroundings). Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “The weak die out and the strong will survive and will live on forever.” Survival, the act of trying to live or exist. In life, everyone fights for happiness, money, family, sanity, and much more. These are the necessities needed to survive. The Hunger Games and The Road share this common theme. However, in The Hunger Games, they are trying to survive an evil dictatorship, and, in The Road, the father and son are surviving the apocalypse. The novels mentioned each display the choices made by humans to prevail in their environment.
In The Hunger Games, the characters goals is to survive to gain freedom. They are forced by a nefarious dictator to compete in taking innocent lives;thus, using violent tactics to survive. They must survive in their everyday lives with the struggles of starvation and for their humanity in the games. If they retaliate the entire district could be destroyed, but if they play the game the possibility of comfortability increases. This what separates Collin’s novel from McCarthy’s.
As the world is incinerated, in McCarthy’s The Road, all resources became scarce. The father and son must survive nature and other individuals. With a harsh winter settling in and the last of humanity turning to cannibalism, their only choice was to survive the journey long enough for freedom. Although The Road and The Hunger Games reasons for survival were different, they have a common achievement in mind.
The above-mentioned novels are similar because the characters were forced to survive for the sake of themselves and others. In Collin’s novel Katniss risked everything for her sister Prim. McCarthy’s novel showcased a father’s love for his son and what he did to ensure his son could survive even if he didn’t. All characters are put in harsh conditions they did not choose. Survival played a very important role in maintain their humanity, dignity, and identity intact.
Survival has remained prevalent today. It is different from our ancestors defending themselves from wild animals, like Arnold Toynbee said, “We are becoming defenseless against ourselves.” Technology is a major contribution to the world and it is changing the way we see culture and how we do things. In order to remain focus you must adapt. Humanity learns and share culture every day. It is passed from generation to generation evolving and this is how we survive. Merlin Donald stated,
“The social environment includes many factors that impinge on development, from bonding and competitive stress to the social facilitation of learning. These can affect brain functioning in many ways, but usually they have no direct influence on functional brain architecture. However, symbolizing cultures own a direct path into our brains and affect the way major parts of the executive brain become wired up during development. This is the key idea behind the notion of deep enculturation… This process entails setting up the very complex hierarchies of cognitive demons (automatic programs) that ultimately establish the possibility of new forms of thought. Culture effectively wires up functional subsystems in the brain that would not otherwise exist.” (A Mind So Rare)
Culture is responsible for how we act and think. This is how survival relates to modern society and cultural events. We use culture to adapt and survive.
