The Lottery Meets The Long Walk

I’ve started reading the Hunger Games. Not bad so far. Intrigueing, decently written, but not too, too original.

The beginning is a retelling of the famos short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and Stephen King’s The Long Walk. If you haven’t read The Lottery (here), then you should do so, now. It takes less than five minutes. King’s story which is much longer, just as fun, is also well worth a read through (though I can’t paste a link to that text here). Take those two stories, throw in some Arnold Schwartzenegger Running Man (also a King story (here)) for fun and you have the Hunger Games.

This brings us full circle into last week’s post (here) about their being no more truly original ideas. I know I’ve lamented in the past the fact that new stories are usually retreads of older ones, and the Hunger Games (so far) offers more fodder for that argument. But, if we assume that there is nothing truly original, then all that matters is what you are able to do with it. So far the Hunger Games has done enough to keep me reading, so that’s good.