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When I first read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, I had never really imagined that dystopian cautionary tale would slowly translate into a mirror to the modern world. The story is set in the fictional city of Panem, a wealthy Capitol that thrives while the outlying districts—numbered to 12—suffer, forced into subjugation and spectacle for the elite’s entertainment. While, yes, the story is set in the future, today’s social, economic, and political developments suggest that the global trajectory may be inching disturbingly close to the one that Suzanne had envisioned.

Collins is famously known for continuing her blockbuster dystopian series whenever she feels that she has something to say, thus leading to the critically acclaimed prequels The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise of the Reaping. They offer us a broader lens to examine power, inequality, and control. The world depicted across these novels—one of extreme class divisions, state surveillance, media manipulation, and political spectacle—is an echo of our reality today.

In the original trilogy, the world is divided into the Capitol’s extravagance and the desperate conditions of the districts. This imbalance is rooted in deep systematic exploitation, a reflection of today’s widening global wealth gap. Billionaires fund space tourism while millions go hungry (yes, we are talking about you, Blue Origin Mission).

In The Ballads of the Songbirds and Snakes, a young Coriolanus Snow (the main antagonist throughout the series) navigates a Capitol that struggles to reassert dominance after a brutal civil war. His rise, driven by power and manipulation, highlights how inequality and political violence become normalized when power is centralized in the hands of the few.

In the newly released Sunrise of the Reaping, which focuses on the 50th Hunger Games—the Quarter Quell in which Haymitch Abernathy emerged as the victor—it delves deeper into how the loud spectacle was weaponized to suppress the voices of the rebels. The idea that the games were designed not just to entertain but to punish and remind the districts of their powerlessness is further solidified through this book. Isn’t today’s reality television and politicized media functioning in a similar way—numbing the public while reinforcing harmful narratives? Today, crisis has become content, and suffering a show.

State violence and surveillance are also increasingly common. In The Hunger Games universe, the Peacekeepers are the ones who enforce Capitol laws with extreme brutality. In our world, militarized police, digital surveillance, and suppression of the minority mirror these tools of control. Protestors in authoritarian regimes—and even some democratic nations—face arrest, censorship, or worse. Like the Capitol, the modern government more often than not justifies these actions under the guise of security and order, while the true motive is control and power.

Climate degradation and resource scarcity, both present themes in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, also align with today’s worldviews. Rising sea levels, wildfires, and food shortages disproportionately affect marginalized communities, much like how the poorer districts suffer in Panem. The Capitol’s indifference to their suffering mirrors how world leaders often ignore or delay climate action in favor of political convenience or economic gain.

However, what is most alarming is that these conditions are accepted as the status quo. Just as Capitol citizens cheer for the games while ignoring the sacrifices that are made, many of us today scroll past news of injustice, distracted or desensitized. The increase in the normalization of inequality, surveillance, and performative politics suggests that Panem is not a future to avoid but a reality that is creeping into our present.

Through her books, Collins expands her warning: tyranny does not rise all at once; it builds slowly, through apathy, spectacle, and silence. Our task is not just to recognize the signs but to resist them before dystopia becomes destiny.