Preserving the Trauma Narrative of The Hunger Games: as based in the novels, the films, and morality
Degree Name
BA
Department
English
College
Humanities
Defense Date
2019-12-11
Publication Date
2019-12-20
First Faculty Advisor
Dr. Brian Jackson
First Faculty Reader
Dr. Dennis Cutchins
Honors Coordinator
Dr. John Talbot
Keywords
the hunger games, trauma, film, adaptation, genre, morals, ethics
Abstract
This thesis discusses both the technical aspects and the moral aspects of preserving trauma when adapting a trauma novel to film, in specific relation to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. The thesis begins by arguing the Hunger Games story as a trauma narrative in its original form, but not so in its film adaptations, and supports this argument by defining the defining characteristics of the trauma narrative–which is voicelessness and an altered sense of self and society, embedded in the internal experience–and applying it to The Hunger Games trilogy, identifying where these occur in the novels and do not in the films. It then addresses the question of if films are capable of portraying trauma narratives at all by assessing Laurie Halse Anderson’s trauma novel and film Speak. Doing so reveals film techniques successfully employed to convey the trauma narrative. The conclusion then draws upon the questions of filmmaker obligation, the impact of the removal of a trauma narrative on a story, what purpose can be found in representing the trauma narrative in its entirety, and what can be gained by those who engage with it.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Turnbull, Rio, "Preserving the Trauma Narrative of The Hunger Games: as based in the novels, the films, and morality" (2019). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 102.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub_uht/102
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/uht0102