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"Food: Art, Protest, Survival"

My senior year of college I took a class called “Girls Fiction” to fulfil my writing intensive distribution requirement. For our final essay, we were given a list of essay prompts and were tasked with writing a 5-6 page argumentative essay responding to one prompt. Due to my senioritis and impending graduation, I had not read any of the ten books assigned that semester except for one- Becoming Naomi Leon ( I only read it because I had to present an in-class book report on it). Luckily one of the other books on the assigned reading list was the Hunger Games which I had in fact read--just ten years prior. In exploring my essay prompt options- only one option involved writing about The Hunger Games. The prompt: “Food is clearly very significant in The Hunger Games. Compare this text's treatment of food to that of at least one other text we've read this semester.”


As a result, I was forced to compare the treatment of food in the Hunger Games to the treatment of food in the only other book I had read- Becoming Naomi Leon. Laken had been hanging out with me while I worked on this essay. We quickly became obsessed with this essay-- it was the biggest piece of bullshit I had ever written, and it was incredible. Laken and I would lay in bed awake discussing the merits of my argument, the fantastic evidence used, and the sheer genius of this bullshit essay.


Girls Fiction Analytical Essay Three

December 11th, 2017


Food: Art, Protest, and Survival


Laura Miller writes that The Hunger Games is “not about persuading the reader to stop something terrible from happening—it’s about what’s happening, right this minute, in the stormy psyche of the adolescent reader” (Miller, Fresh Hell). Here, Miller highlights how despite the characterization as dystopian fiction, The Hunger Games provides moments for readers to relate to the realities of an unfamiliar world. One of the ways Collins does this, is through using food as an anchoring theme and metaphor which allows readers to relate to aspects of dystopian Panem. Looking specifically at the role of food in The Hunger Games, I argue that it becomes a crucial mechanism for developing and asserting identity and for resisting class power. Furthermore, food transcends its role as sustenance to fuel survival - where class norms could dictate relationships to food for low-income families, characters reclaim food’s purpose as artists, thus subverting conventions. Despite being dystopian fiction, these themes surrounding food are paralleled in realistic fiction and emerge in Pam Munoz Ryan’s 2004 novel Becoming Naomi Leon. Despite the differing genres of these books, they both demonstrate that food serves as a vehicle for reclaiming power, subverting class expectations and asserting identity in their respective societies.


In both Becoming Naomi Leon and The Hunger Games traditional relations to food dissolve, and Peeta and Naomi engage with food as a form of art with the intention of survival. When Katniss is searching for Peeta in the arena, she finds him by stepping on him. Katniss goes on to describe Peeta's face and arms as “so artfully disguised as to be invisible”, blending in perfectly with the flora on the ground of the forest. The reader then learns that Peeta uses his cake decorating skills from working in his family’s bakery in district twelve in order to camouflage himself. Peeta describes his camouflage by saying “Yes frosting. The final defense of the dying” (Collins, 252) . While this scene does not actually include food, the skill of artful cake decorating is derived from Peeta’s relationship with food and is used as a skill for survival. Likewise, in Becoming Naomi Leon, Naomi needs to meet her father in order to get his support in a custody battle against her abusive, alcoholic mother, Skyla, and carry on her life living with her great grandmother, Gran. In order to navigate these menacing family dynamics, Naomi relies on La Noche de los Rabanos, a radish carving competition, as the mechanism to reunite with her father. Thus the survival of her current lifestyle living with Gran is at risk, unless she meets her father via the culture of engaging with radishes as art. Food, in both of these examples, is used as a form of art beyond the usual expected conventions and as a tool for survival and agency.


In Becoming Naomi Leon, reclaiming food’s purpose as art additionally acts as a form of resistance to class norms and hegemonic power. Naomi’s hometown, a trailer park known as Avocado Acres, is depicted as a modest low income community. Despite being lower class, Naomi and her neighbours, Bernardo and Fabiola, enter into the radish carving competition while in Oaxaca City. Gram inquires about what happens to the radishes after the festival, to which Bernardo answers that “It is good luck to have one of them on your table for your Christmas feast. But soon they dry up and must be thrown away” (Munoz Ryan, 192). Gram responds “All that work and they only last a few days” shaking her head (Munoz Ryan, 192). Grams comments reveal that In their usual class context, food is only meant for consumption and not artful excess, yet Naomi and her neighbours defy this convention through engaging in radish carving subvert class expectations. In District 12, characterized by rations and scarcity, food is solely meant for consumption and survival. Peksoy argues in her critical essay Food as Control in The Hunger Games Trilogy that the “lack of food is used as a metaphorical power by the Capitol to oppress the district people” (Peksoy, 80). While food scarcity is used as a mechanism of oppression by the Capitol, its uses in District 12 show agency and resistance to this power and their class expectations. While Peeta himself isn’t terribly poor and comes from a baker’s family, the lavished act of cake decorating in the districts characterized by poverty and famine undermines the conventional uses of food.


Foods subversive power in The Hunger Game to resist class power extends beyond this example of cake decorating. In the end of The Hunger Games, Peeta and Katniss are left as the final two tributes when a voice booms into the arena telling the “The earlier revision has been revoked” and that “only one winner may be allowed” (Collins, 342). Throughout, the hunger games have been manipulated by those in the capitol exercising power over tributes from the districts. In a final act of defiance, Peeta and Katniss agree to eat poisonous berries together on the count of three, knowing that the Gamemakers “have to have a victor” otherwise they will have failed the Capitol and “might possibly even be executed” (Collins, 345). By demonstrating to the Capitol that they are both willing to eat the berries, Peeta and Katniss are resisting the rules imposed on them. Furthermore, just as they are about to eat the berries, Peeta says “Hold them out, I want everyone to see” (Collins, 344). Peeta demonstrates that not only are they willing to eat the berries in an act of defiance, but doing so is also an act of performative consumption that reclaims surveillance for its broadcasting capacities. In this scene, Peeta and Katniss do not end up eating the berries, but their treatment of the berries, shows how they utilize food, and the games themselves, to broadcast resistance to all of Panem.


Earlier in The Hunger Games, Katniss also utilizes food as a tool for defiance against power during her training demonstration to the Gamemakers. Katniss shoots a bullseye, yet the Gamemakers are busy mingling and focused on their own feast. She exclaims “Suddenly, I am furious, that with my life on the line, they don’t even have the decency to pay attention to me.” (Collins, 101) In a moment of fury, Katniss sends an arrow towards the Gamemakers table and skewers the apple in their roasted pig’s mouth and then says “Thank you for your consideration.” (Collins, 182) By shooting the apple, Katniss uses her interaction with food as a mechanism of protest against the Gamemakers actions at her demonstration. Unlike the example of the berries as a form of resistance, here Katniss interacts with food as protest without consumption. Moreover, by asserting her identity as someone who is a skilled hunter, bold and unapologetic, Katniss uses this opportunity to formulate and perform her identity.

Naomi, like Katniss, also uses food as a mechanism to develop and express her identity. When reunited with her father, Santiago, he explains that “You must carve so that what is inside can become what it is meant to be. When you are finished the magic will show itself for what it really is” (Munoz Ryan, 223). Carving thus becomes symbolic of revealing true identity. For La Noche de los Rábanos, Naomi carves a radish lion. By carving a lion, commonly associated with strength and pride, Naomi asserts herself as bold and confident despite her earlier depictions as reserved. Throughout the text, Naomi struggles to understand her Mexican American identity with very little connection to her parents. Particularly, Naomi struggles to connect with her full name, Naomi Soledad Leon Outlaw. Through carving a lion, or el Leon in Spanish, Naomi forms a symbiotic relationship to part of her name that felt otherwise estranged.


Clearly, food takes on significance beyond sustenance for consumption in both Becoming Naomi Leon and The Hunger Games. Both texts are riddled with scenes related to consuming food not discussed in this essay. By focusing on scenes depicting food without consumption, one can see the role of food extends beyond sustenance. Food has symbolic and metaphorical power and becomes a vehicle for expression and agency. These novels in many regards are strikingly different, so one may wonder- why does drawing a comparison between them matter? Despite their differences, drawing these parallels across texts reveals the complex realities of human interaction with food. Furthermore, this comparison shows that while many of the realities surrounding food in The Hunger Games are dystopian, putting this text in conversation with a piece of realistic fiction shows us that the power of food extends beyond the world of Panem. Lastly, both of these texts target audiences are young adults, particularly young girls. For girls a developmentally significant time in their lives reading about protagonists that use food to help express and form their identity and to defy expectations set to confine them, these books both do something crucial- they teach girls the power of protest and that something as simple as food can help them express who they are.


Works Cited

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008. Print.

Miller, Laura.Fresh Hell: What’s behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers?” in The New Yorker. 2010. Digital.

Peksoy, Emrah. “Food as control in The Hunger Games Trilogy” in Procidea- Social and Behavioral Sciences vol 158. 2014. 79-84. Doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.12.036

Ryan, Pam Muñoz. Becoming Naomi León. New York: Scholastic Press, 2004. Print.


By Valerie

Image by Laken Sylvander

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