Luke and I have been reading The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson over the past few weeks. I remember really enjoying it when I read it as a child, even if I didn't really know who was fighting in the War of the Roses. And Luke is enjoying it as well, despite the archaic language and difficult to understand motivations.
After the third or fourth person was shot in the back and died in front of the main character, he did say, "This is worse than The Hunger Games!" And I have to say, he's not wrong. The main character, Dick, kills a spy in cold blood (by surprising him, not really in a fair fight) rather than be discovered, which would mean Dick's certain death. Then he has to stay all night in disguise in a monk's habit in the abbey praying for the dead spy, after which the monks clean the blood off the floor and prepare for the wedding of Dick's beloved to a greedy, conniving nobleman. During the wedding, though, the groom is shot through the heart with a black arrow. Other scenes have a greater number of people dying, but this night wins for volume of named characters dead.
So it's a bit bloody but I never even noticed when I was growing up. It's hard to say whether the violence in the Hunger Games is of a different type, or if I'm just more sensitive to it now that I have kids, or if the modernity of the setting makes it seem more graphic and personal. I'm not really willing to reread the hunger games to find out, but it's interesting to think about.
After the third or fourth person was shot in the back and died in front of the main character, he did say, "This is worse than The Hunger Games!" And I have to say, he's not wrong. The main character, Dick, kills a spy in cold blood (by surprising him, not really in a fair fight) rather than be discovered, which would mean Dick's certain death. Then he has to stay all night in disguise in a monk's habit in the abbey praying for the dead spy, after which the monks clean the blood off the floor and prepare for the wedding of Dick's beloved to a greedy, conniving nobleman. During the wedding, though, the groom is shot through the heart with a black arrow. Other scenes have a greater number of people dying, but this night wins for volume of named characters dead.
So it's a bit bloody but I never even noticed when I was growing up. It's hard to say whether the violence in the Hunger Games is of a different type, or if I'm just more sensitive to it now that I have kids, or if the modernity of the setting makes it seem more graphic and personal. I'm not really willing to reread the hunger games to find out, but it's interesting to think about.
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