The Importance of Music in the Hunger Games

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.”