The Hanging Tree Symbol Analysis

Katniss sings a song called “The Hanging Tree” about a man who has been hanged. In the song he calls out for his lover, still alive, to “flee,” but in the end, it becomes clear that he’s asking her to die along with him, hanging from a tree. Although Katniss has known this song for many years—her dead father taught it to her—it takes on new meanings as she becomes older, more mature, and more traumatized by the violence she’s witnessed in the Hunger Games. The Hanging Tree itself, a symbol of the eerie peacefulness of death, becomes increasingly appealing to her—she wishes she could escape from her duties and obligations to the rebel cause, and be “at peace.” This doesn’t mean that Katniss is suicidal, exactly. Rather, the tree encapsulates both pain and peace—in this way, it represents a kind of “compromise state.” Because of the trauma Katniss has accumulated, to be both peaceful and wounded is the best she can hope for.