DYSTOPIA

I've just closed the final book in the Hunger Games series ... and I pause.  This was no kids' storybook.  I can nearly taste the ashes mixed with blood-tinged roses.  Feel the confusion and terror.  Hear the crowds cheer the gladiatorial slaughter.  Panem et Circenses.

Rusty, mid-20th century iron bridge
against elegant, 19th Century building
San Antonio, Texas

Wow.

The dystopia is unnerving because it so resembles an absurdist reality:  the menacing undercurrent of a gleaming, frivolous Capitol.  Starvation and desolation elsewhere.  A subdued and mesmerized population.  History repeating itself.  Panem et Circenses.  As one of the protagonists desperately tries to grasp, "Real or not?"

I feel as disoriented as the characters in the book, with fiction mixing with recollections of my recent visit to San Antonio with my family.  After all, Texas was the seat of a bloody revolution which won itself -- at  great human cost -- a decade-long Republic in the mid-1800s.  

Rear face of The Alamo, viewed from its garden
San Antonio, Texas

The Alamo, beautiful today with its cactus-filled gardens, was the scene of a horrific massacre by Santa Anna's forces from Mexico in 1836. No survivors. Soldiers and farmers alike fell in valiant defense. But converse to Santa Anna's calculating plan of teaching the rebels a lesson, it turned the fortress into a rallying cry for a Texas Republic.  Remember The Alamo!  Heroism from characters, like the Tennessee sharpshooter, Davy Crockett, echoes through the walls.  Battle tales border on fiction.

Not too different from the Hunger Games.

The crumbling grandeur
of Victorian mansions in the
King William (Kaiser Wilhelm) district,
where German settlers stayed and prospered.
San Antonio, Texas

Fortunately, San Antonio wasn't really all disheartening.  Wandering the tree-lined streets of the old neighborhoods hinted at more hopeful times.  This is a city settled by hardy adventurers.  Europeans searching for better fortunes, where land was literally free.  It's such an American cliché -- a city built by immigrant go-getters.

Wildflowers by the Mission San José
founded by the Spanish in 1720
San Antonio, Texas

My visit was actually far happier than this post might convey.  My cousin's wedding was joyous, and my family lived up to its rowdy reputation.  I think we frightened my cousin's new wife's family with our vivaciousness on the dance floor.  The photo below best shows the bubbly mood we were all in.

Me and my cousin (the groom's sister)
Being silly at the wedding reception

Have you read the Hunger Games?  Or other novels on dystopian societies?