Having been a substitute teacher for nine-plus years now, I’m reasonably familiar with the curriculum in many subjects, especially English. Two of the books studied every year are To Kill a Mockingbird (as close as anyone has come to The Great American Novel) and Lord of the Flies. Yesterday I learned there has been a change this year. Lord of the Flies has been dropped in favor of The Hunger Games. The reason given is all the key elements are the same in both, so they decided to go with the more contemporary story.
I’ve actually never read either myself, but I’ve been in enough classes to be familiar with Lord of the Flies. On the other hand, I’ve always had a simultaneous repulsion and attraction to The Hunger Games; I’m repulsed by the basic idea but intrigued by the story. Consequently I didn’t see the movie but was planning to read the book someday. Well, during the last two days of being an aide and sitting in on an English Literature class while they were watching the movie, I’ve seen the first half of it. It is quite a story and I find myself getting sucked in — so what does happen in such a grim tale?
I suppose I could bring myself to watch the rest of the movie now on the premise that I’d be studying the storyline from a writer’s perspective. Or maybe I’ll just download the book to my Kindle and start sneaking peeks.
How would I have written it? Now I guess that someday I’m going to have to confront that question.