Throughout the three books, music periodically shows up
again and again. What is its significance?
In The Hunger Games, music
doesn’t show up that much. It first shows up in the mockingjay pin Madge gives
to Katniss, as she examines it on the train. She relates their history and how
they are “a slap in the face to the Capitol” (HG 42). She also remembers how
the mockingjays always respected her father’s singing when they hunted, and how
she never sang after he died.
When talking in the arena with Rue about their lives, she
doesn’t share Rue’s deep love of music. “In our world I rank music somewhere
between hair ribbons and rainbows in terms of usefulness. At least a rainbow
gives you a tip about the weather” (HG 211). I don’t blame Katniss for
scoffing. She hasn’t had a chance to develop her identity since she became head
of the family when she was just eleven. She weighs the importance of things
based on how they’ll help her survive, as shown in her quip about rainbows.
Music plays a small but important role in coaxing her out of her hardened
shell.
Singing to Rue on her deathbed is the first breakthrough
music makes in her toughened exterior. She remembers the happy times she had
with her father singing and decides to sing one more time, for a little girl so
much like her sister, and sings all the way to the end of the song for her. I
would say that singing to Rue pushes Katniss to perform her first great act of
rebellion, covering her in flowers. Already the injustice of it, having an
innocent twelve-year-old die in her arms, has angered her, but the singing, the
reminder of her father, goads her fully into understanding the necessity of a
rebellion. That night, Katniss has a dream about Rue singing, though the dream
is more about Rue than music.
Music shows up one last time, more subtly, when Peeta tells Katniss
the story of how he first noticed her, when she sang the first day of school,
and Mr. Mellark told him how the birds fell silent when Katniss’s father sang.
She recalls her father singing again and singing on the first day of school,
and realizes from these true details that Peeta may actually love her. This
idea—a boyfriend, and thus the love triangle—is another aspect that brings out
her compassion and makes her kinder.
Music’s role in the first book is largely unimportant. It
merely serves as a backdrop to emotional moments, such as understanding the
meaning behind a token or helping a young girl die peacefully or realizing the
truth of an anecdote. It opens up Katniss’s softer side and her kindness,
showing that she is not merely a one-dimensional gritty huntress.
In Catching Fire,
music has an even smaller role, marginally appearing in the book. It shows up
occasionally through other means: Madge teaching Katniss how to play piano, the
canary Mrs. Everdeen received after her friend Maysilee died, and when Katniss
imagines “a place like the meadow in the song I sang to Rue as she died.” (354).
It shows up most prominently in a dream she has during the
victory tour, a dream “following a mockingjay through the woods. For a long
time. It was Rue.. when it sang, it had her voice… We never arrived… But I felt
happy.” (CF 85). Having just been to the Capitol and seen her mockingjay
everywhere, perhaps this is why Katniss dreamed about one.
Music plays its largest role in Mockingjay. The Hanging Tree,
obviously, is a major part of this, but the first instance of music, when
Haymitch asks for incidents when Katniss genuinely moved them, comes from
Boggs. “When she sang. When the little girl died.” (MJ 75). Haymitch agrees, “Who
didn’t get choked up at that?” (MJ 75).
The Hanging Tree
is the biggest instance of music in this book. When Katniss and Pollux are in
the woods near the remains of District Twelve, she sings the song to the
mockingjays. In the memory of when she learnt the song, she reveals that when
she was seven “I could memorize almost anything set to music after a round or
two.” She couldn’t forget the song, even after her mother outlawed it, and she
understood the lyrics as she grew older. The song shows up again and again, when
she goes into battle and a comrade wishes to die rather than face torture. It’s
a way for her to understand the dynamics and what war does to people, the main
theme of the book.
She also recalls the song during the battle in Two, when
talking with Haymitch. Her mentor explains that they played the clip of her
singing the “Hanging Tree” to Peeta, and he recognized it from hearing Mr.
Everdeen sing it years ago. Katniss thinks, “My father. He seem to be everywhere today… Singing his way into
Peeta’s muddled consciousness.” (MJ 211).
At the end of the book, during Katniss’s time in solitary
confinement, she begins singing.
“I begin to sing. At the window, in the shower, in my sleep.
Hour after hour of ballads, love songs, mountain airs. All the sogns my father
taught me before he died, for certainly there has been very little music in my
life since. What’s amazing is how clearly I remember them. The tunes, the
lyrics. My voice, at first rough and breaking on the high notes, warms up into
something splendid. A voice that would make the mockingjays fall silent and
then tumble over themelves to join in. Days pass, weeks. I watch the snow fall
on the ledge outside my window. And in all that time, mine is the only voice I
hear.”
Katniss’s singing is a stark contrast to her time between
Prim’s death and her talk with Snow, when she loses her voice. In a way during
this time, she heals through singing and recalling her father, just time spent
alone, hearing only her voice. Music shows up one last time in the epilogue,
recalling the lullaby as she watches her children playing.
So what does music represent to Katniss? It’s a way for her to
heal, it’s a way she can make meaning of the world. It’s a way for her to
remember the best part of Prim, “an ability to look into the confusing mess of
life and see things for what they are.”
