Rewriting the Hunger Games: the odds we live with

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Diana Pricop explores how extreme inequality is making dystopian fiction feel increasingly like reality

Imagine a world where your chance of survival depends on your geographical position, where you happen to be born and bred. This is the world we live in today. We call The Hunger Games a dystopian fiction, yet every day, millions of people are on the brink of starvation while others waste enough food to feed entire communities. The difference between watching young tributes fight to the death in the arena and our world today is that there are no cameras, no sponsors and no guarantee that anyone is watching.

Those starving are silenced and have no way of asking for help, because they are pushed down and treated, by those with enormous wealth and power, as if they are not human at all. The further the world becomes unequal, the further dystopian fiction begins to feel far less like fiction and far more like reality. The Hunger Games is no longer just pages in a book or a movie on a screen; it is unfolding before us right now.

In 2026, it can sometimes feel as though the first real Hunger Games has begun. Although they aren’t literally being forced to fight to the death in a makeshift arena for the entertainment of the Capitol, our children today face far greater and real arenas. There’s war, which claims an estimated 650 lives every day, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program; hunger, which the United Nations says 673 million people live with chronically; and poverty, reported by the World Bank at 3.5 billion people living on less than $6.85 a day.

The wealth gap is wider than ever, with the top 1% having more wealth than the bottom 95% combined. People have nothing, while others have more than they could use in their entire lifetimes.

Inequality affects us all. Extreme gaps in wealth shouldn’t be seen as normal.

Figures like Elon Musk have more wealth than most of us could ever imagine, while millions struggle simply to survive. We have reached a point where the wealth of single individuals can exceed the economic output of entire countries, and although we all share this earth and we are all human, it seems some value money more than human life.

This never-ending cycle is acknowledged by us, those of us who are watching from a safe distance, but it’s disturbing how we easily desensitise and feel as though it does not affect us. Maybe it’s that we’ve become so accustomed to extraordinary wealth existing alongside extraordinary poverty that we no longer find the contrast shocking. Inequality affects all of us all. We shouldn’t accept extreme wealth inequality as normal.

We are constantly told that if we work hard enough we can become anything, but how much of that is really true when the game starts with some players miles ahead of everyone else? Some are born into wealth and power, others into a fight just to survive. The odds are never in our favour and we must stop pretending they are. But the game was built by people, and what people build, people can change. Fiction is becoming reality before our eyes. It’s time to wake up, because unless we make a drastic change, the odds may never be in our favour.

Want to find out more or get involved? Check out these two organisations that are working directly on the issues raised here.

• Oxfam: works globally to tackle poverty and the extreme wealth gap, campaigning for a fairer world as well as responding to crises.
• Mary’s Meals: provides free, nutritious school meals to children living in some of the world’s poorest communities.