Hunger Games question #2

Question:

This novel is written in first person present tense narration. How does this affect the tone of the novel? Why do you think Collins chooses to write from the first person perspective? Secondly, why does she write in the present tense instead of the past tense?

My answer:

It is a personal choice to write however the author feels like. I think that making it first person allows the reader to get a peek into the protagonist’s head. When writing in third person, sometimes you get a look into other people’s minds as well, but when writing in first person, you (and the protagonist) have to guess at what goes on in other character’s brains. If Collins were to rewrite the Hunger Games, and she chose to put it in third person, the story wouldn’t have as many surprising and exciting pockets. We would know what was going on and what the other characters were doing. In some points, for example, when Peeta is taken to the Capitol and is hijacked, it would have been interesting to hear from his point of view, but we would know that he was being hijacked instead of discovering it with Katniss experiencing her shock and emotional trauma the way we do in first person. I like that it is written in present tense, we as readers get to be with Katniss in the moment and discover things when she discovers them instead of through a time-filter like we might in past tense.