President Snow and Pink's "Dear Mr. President" - A Comparison

In 2006 Pink published the song “Dear Mr. President” as a letter to George W. Bush. It is about many issues in the United States at the time it was publicized and how he ignored them. Coincidentally, the song does also deal with many problems existing in “Panem”, the fictional country in the novel “The Hunger Games”. In Panem, there is a huge difference between the living conditions of the Capitol and the Districts. While the rich people living the Captiol have everything they want and more, the very poor ones in the Districts have to starve.

“Dear Mr. President, come take a walk with me. Let's pretend we're just two people and you're not better than me. I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.”

This is how the song starts and although until now Pink – or one of the people living in the Districts - did not really criticizes anything about him President Snow would probably refuse to accept this walk. In his opinion he is better than others especially than poor people. He only needs those to get corn, coal etc. but does not care in any other way about them.

“How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?

How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?

How do you walk with your head held high?

Can you even look me in the eye and tell me why?”

Pink wants to galvanize the president and tell him how people feel because of war etc. and wants to ask him what he thinks it is like to lose your own child because of that. To ask how President Snow sleeps while all the others are crying concerns mostly the hunger games. This is connected with some irony since he created them partly for entertaining. I think he dreams well during the hunger games and does not feel affected at all. After the reaping the family has only a few minutes to say goodbye to their child, and that is of course not long enough. Losing your child this way has to be terrible when you cannot do anything against it. Nevertheless, the mother is even forced to watch her own child kill others or be killed by them in front of everyone and that makes it intolerable. But the president walks with his head held high, does not admit any mistake. And I actually do think he could look you in the eye and tell you about it because he is such an conscienceless man.

“Dear Mr. President, you would never take a walk with me, would you?”

Although there is the freedom of the press Pink was afraid of the consequences and did not publish in the USA but only in Europe, Canada and Australia. And of course, nobody in Panem would ever say these things out loud because they are all too frightened of the Capitol. But even if someone was that brave there is no way the president would listen to him or her and accept it. All he would do is probably kill the person who asked him for answers and that is why the Districts' situation is so much worse than ours.   

There are even more similarities and the Capitol but I think these are the most important ones :)

Thank you for reading my blog entry!

JW