Theme Essay on The Hunger Games
Topic: Theme in The Hunger Games
Audience: Teacher or Professor
Purpose: Persuade (prove your claim right)
Genre: Academic Essay
Point of View: 3rd Person (you don’t need to use “I think” or “I believe”)
What is an academic essay?
In an academic essay, you make a claim (a statement that something is true) and you support
your claim with evidence. See the example essay to get a better idea of what this looks like. The writer
claims that a powerful government is positive because it provides protection, food, and entertainment.
While the writer uses textual evidence from The Hunger Games to support those claims, the claims
themselves are false. I want you to see how to write the claim and textual evidence in paragraphs, but I
want you to decide for yourself what theme is most important.
What is a theme?
Theme is like a TRUISM. It is an underlying message about life or human nature that a writer
wants the reader to understand. “Survival” is a topic. “People will do whatever it takes to survive” is a
theme statement. What do you think Suzanne Collins wanted to show about life or human nature?
How to use the Target Notes?
The Target Notes is a graphic organizer to help you get your thinking on paper before you start
writing your theme essay. You can start by putting a topic that seems important in the middle circle.
Then come up with examples from the story that prove this is an important topic. In the outer ring of
the circle, you can actually write down quotes from the book that might help you in writing your essay.
At this point, you are ready to think about your thesis. If you already have your theme statement, you
are ready to start writing. However, you might need to use the instructions at the top of the page to
help you develop your thesis.
1. Identify the subject of your paper. Survival
2. Turn your subject into a guiding question. What will people do to survive?
3. Answer your question with a statement. People will do whatever it takes to survive.
4. Refine this statement into a working thesis. People will kill animals and even humans to survive.
*** Your paragraphs in the essay would then focus on examples of people killing animals and people
killing humans and you need to prove that they are doing this because they need to survive. Pick your
best examples and think about how you will organize these ideas into paragraphs.