Hunger Games # 12

Question/Subject: : Write a reflection on the nature of Evil in our times and in The Hunger
Games.

I can honestly say that I don't know what the nature of evil is, at least not yet. I've never experienced anything in my extremely sheltered life that would lead me to believe what evil is, or what it's like to see it first hand, to feel it. The best I could do is to come to a conclusion not unlike what Dr. Baron showed the class during his presentation. The idea that evil is a lack of compassion, the enjoyment of other's suffering. This makes sense to me, I suppose. I've never met anybody like that, really, never witnessed it. Sure, I've seen some pretty gnarly road rage and stuff like that, but nothing that comes close to this definition.

Then, I heard Mr.Sztajer's speech about his time in the concentration camps and I think I truly understand now what true evil is. Evil is when people abandon their morals for a greater ideal. They allow others to do their thinking for them and they begin to let their hearts and minds look to people in "power" to decide what's right and wrong. True evil isn't hatred or anger. It's apathy. Looking at another human being and simply not caring about what happens to them or where they go, or how awful they must feel. To see a person, starving to death while they dig their own grave and not feeling anything... That is evil. This coincides with what Mr. Sztajer said at the beginning of his speech: "The best way for evil to win is for good people to do nothing." Therefore, those that knew what was going on in Germany and did nothing, they're just as guilty as those that fired the guns or ran the camps. There is a debt owed to the survivors and victims of the Holocaust that society can never, and will never pay. Society allowed evil to exist and perpetuated it, and this in itself is evil.

The same can be said in the Hunger Games for the people of the Capital. They watched the Hunger Games every year, and they didn't think twice about the suffering of the children, the horrors of the districts, or the pain that every family had to endure while watching their son or daughter die. Instead, they bought into the hype from President Snow and allowed it to happen. It is easy to simply say that Snow is evil and be done with it, but the fact remains that the people of the Capital looked on for 75 years and did nothing, and I don't think there's a whole lot more evil than that.