"May the odds be ever in your favor!"
This phrase is the tagline to Suzanne Collins’ bestselling series, The Hunger Games. In the book, these are the words spoken elatedly by the ever-bubbly Effie Trinket, the Capitol’s liaison to District 12, the backwash of Panem marked only by a layer of soot and bodies worn thin by meager meals. The words are offered as encouragement to those children about to be entered into the Hunger Games, a death match of 24 children put on each year to encourage the districts to keep in their proper place and satiate the desire of the Capitol citizens for drama- and suspense-laden entertainment. On the surface, it seems like a nice sentiment…”may the odds be ever in your favor.” A nice thought, hoping that destiny will be kind to you. A nice thought...until its underlying meanings are revealed. “May you not be chosen to be entered into a fight to the death.” “May you not be brutally killed by someone just like you.” “May you have no trouble killing other people before they kill you.”
“May the odds be ever in your favor” actually signifies, “Good luck getting out of a system that is dead set against you.”
But what if things weren’t set on odds? What if instead of casually hoping that the odds work out for your privilege at the expense of someone else, the odds were eliminated?
A system built on odds always privileges someone at the expense of others. May the odds be ever in your favor. May you be born a citizen of the Capitol instead of a citizen of the districts. Or, in our own reality, may you be born a citizen of the wealthy West rather than the third world. May your life be filled with extravagance and excess instead of with the sweatshop work that forms the foundation of such excess.
I’ve often heard people say that they are poor. Since I run in American middle-class circles, this is very rarely true. Usually, it’s in jest, like the proverbial “poor college students” who feel poor because they’ve spent all their money on cheesesticks. Often, it’s people lamenting about how they can’t afford the latest technological gadget because they’ve spent a bunch of money on the previous month’s latest gadget. Most of the people who toss about the word “poor” like it’s nothing still have roofs over their heads, food in their cupboards, and clothes in their closet. That’s because believing oneself to be poor, more often than not, is relative to a perceived notion of not-poor, an idealized vision of life where the odds are, in fact, ever in your favor.
But I have a newsflash for middle-class America. You’re living in the Capitol.
The mark of the Capitol is excess. Suzanne Collins portrays this brilliantly in the fashions of Capitol citizens, dressed to the nines in the latest getup of green skin with rhinestone accents or aqua hair and leopard spots. They eat at buffets while people in the districts starve. They hold banquets featuring vials of liquid that make them vomit so that they can eat all the hundreds of delicacies available. They view the Hunger Games as wonderful entertainment, comfortable in the knowledge that their own children will never be subject to its cruelties and sufficiently distanced from the people of the districts to keep from viewing them as real people with real lives that are being jeopardized.
How very like our own world, where we buy cheap luxuries at grand department stores, hundreds of thousands of miles away from the foreign factory where they were produced, often by people working 20-hour days on a salary less than the cost of our morning cup of coffee.
This is the danger of a consumer-driven culture. When things become all about “me,” it’s easy to forget about the “other” who made your life as comfortable as it is.
If you have ever called yourself “poor,” then I want to give you a challenge. I challenge you to look around the room, wherever you may be, and find something that is not a necessity. Personally, as I sit here in my living room, it’s that stack of rainbow coffee mugs that I hardly ever use. It’s the Wii game console that sits under my flatscreen TV. It’s the electric keyboard, the acoustic guitar, the hundred DVDs that fill my bookshelf. And that’s just a glimpse into the living room…go into the kitchen and it’s the cans of soup that have been in my cupboard for two years because I’ve always had something else to eat. Go into the bedroom closet, and it’s the clothes that I own but never wear, or the shoes that hurt my feet and rarely see the light of day.
Now that we’re in the closet, let’s think about clothes. Because certainly, clothes are a necessity. They keep us warm when it’s cold, keep us cool when it’s warm, and protect us from all the elements in between. They keep us comfortable. Where do we get this comfort? Personally, my clothes most often come from Old Navy and Kohls. At least, that’s where I think my clothes come from. But the answer is not so simple…the Old Navy top I’m wearing right now was made in Cambodia. My purple T-shirt dress from Kohls was made in Vietnam. The collared shirt I bought for job interviews last year was made in Indonesia. As my favorite stores outsource to different countries for their production, as leisure goods become cheaper and cheaper by a populace who thinks they deserve every luxury at the lowest price, the workers of the world are exploited and my comfort is brought about at the cost of human dignity.
Why? Because the odds are in my favor.
I was born in America. I have been afforded every opportunity for education and general well-being. Even the student loans that often cause me to hypocritically complain of being “poor” are greater gifts than much of the world experiences…how dare my government provide me with money for my education! How dare they help me attain the means to a higher salary! While that money is certainly borrowed and will be paid back over a great amount of time, it’s given me opportunities that most of the world doesn’t have. The oppressed poor are kept subordinate by a lack of provisionary goods and intense labor, while the products of their work are sent off to the wealthy West. Sent to the people and countries who rule the world, and who run the system. Sent to the Capitol.
I was born in America. But I could have been born in Cambodia, or Vietnam, or Indonesia. I could have been born into a life where I work for the comfort of others. But instead, I was born into a life where others work for my comfort.
Maybe Panem isn’t as fictional as it seems. Maybe the dystopian society that Suzanne Collins has created bears more resemblance to our own world than we would like to realize.
What is perhaps most harrowing, most angering in Effie Trinket’s cheerful appeal for favorable odds is the constant awareness that the odds will never be in the favor of District 12. As the story is told from the viewpoint of the unprivileged, this is eminently clear from start to finish. Why should the chance for a dignified life be left to odds? Shouldn’t something be done to balance things out? The beautiful thing about the problem of unfair distribution of wealth is that something can be done about it. The solution is simple, really. To fix the unfair distribution of wealth, redistribute the wealth. Spend $400 on medical supplies for third world citizens instead of on an iPad. Pay a little extra for fair trade items. Find the excess in your own life, cut it out, and give the rest away. It’s certainly not going to fix the system entirely, but it will make a difference to individual lives. Even if the unfair system can’t be easily overturned, we can do our part within the system to redistribute the wealth that has been accumulating on our end for far too long. And more than anything, be aware. Remember that you are rich. Remember that your comfort is built off the discomfort of others. And after you’ve remembered, decide to do something about it.
Remember that the odds are in your favor. Help the odds be in someone else’s favor as well.
