ABSTRACT
Food and foodways have long been present in American fiction, of course, but inadequate critical attention has been paid to food used as a substantial plot or other literary device, where it assumes a crucial narrative role. Food in The Road and The Hunger Games is often the source of conflict, and yet critics have subordinated it to other issues, thus squandering opportunities to better understand its influence on each of these works as integral to their literary expression. Exploring consumption and community on multiple levels, Birkenstein examines why, for instance, post-apocalyptic cannibals cannot achieve positive community and why the endless battle between father and son—whether to share or to not share food, and with whom—undergirds any chance they might have of rebuilding society. Food may seem an obvious realm of exploration in a book with the title of The Hunger Games, but extant criticism has mostly focused not on food per se, but on the gender and power relations of the violent Games themselves. And yet, weaponized hunger in this world is ubiquitous, pitting commoner against commoner. The search for adequate food for the outlawed majority is the omnipresent struggle. Ironically, decadent food used significantly by the government will not maintain its survival, as it believes. While both The Road and The Hunger Games end with some light, salvation is distant for these outlaws, and dependent on radically altering the food calculus.
