The Hunger Games Wiki
Register
Advertisement
The-hunger-games-katniss-rue-death-flowers

Katniss Everdeen putting flowers around Rue after Rue's death.

Flowers appear numerous times in The Hunger Games trilogy—either as real plants seen by the characters or just references in the text—and in some cases they play a major symbolic role in the story line.

Buttercup[]

Primrose Everdeen named her cat Buttercup, insisting that his muddy yellow coat resembled the flower.[1]

Daisies[]

The Hunger Games[]

Katniss Everdeen sings to Rue as she dies, and a lyric of the song mentions "the daisies guard you from every harm".[2] At the beginning of The Hunger Games film, Katniss is also shown singing a verse of this song to Prim to calm her down from a nightmare.[3]

Dandelions[]

Dandelion

Dandelion

"That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that."
—Katniss Everdeen, Mockingjay, Chapter 27[src]

Dandelions are a symbol of hope to Katniss Everdeen, and are strongly associated with Peeta Mellark.

The Hunger Games[]

After Peeta gave her the bread that saved her family from starvation, Katniss saw him at school near a field of dandelions. Katniss and her sister also picked dandelions to serve as food when their father died and they were very hungry (she had seen them when she was in school). She learned from her family's plant book that dandelions could be used for food. When Katniss threw the cookies Peeta's father gave to her after the reaping out the window of the train, they fell open next to a bunch of dandelions.[4]

Honeysuckle[]

The Hunger Games[]

After she woke up from her tracker jacker venom-induced coma, Katniss had a bad taste in her mouth that water couldn't alleviate. She plucked a flower off a honeysuckle bush and used the drop of nectar from its stamen to refresh her palate. The taste reminded her of home.[5]

Mockingjay[]

Katniss recounted that the last time she'd sung "The Hanging Tree" when she was seven, her mother had gotten very angry at her father. Frightened because Mrs. Everdeen never usually yelled, Katniss ran off to her only hiding spot: underneath a honeysuckle bush in the Meadow.[6]

Posy[]

Gale Hawthorne's little sister Posy is named for a flower. The word can also refer to a small bunch of flowers of any type.

Primrose[]

Primrose cc preview

Purple primroses

"Prim's face is fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named."
—Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games, Chapter 1[src]

Primrose Everdeen is named after the evening primrose.[1]

Mockingjay[]

When Peeta Mellark returns to District 12 after the end of the Second Rebellion, one of the first things he does is relocate five bushes of primrose from the woods and begins to plant them outside of Katniss's house in the Victors' Village as a memorial to Prim. It was this action that snapped Katniss out of the lethargy she had been in for months and she began living again.[7]

Roses[]

White rose

White rose

"No one will fully understand - how it's not just a flower, not even just President Snow's flower, but a promise of revenge."
—Katniss Everdeen[src]

Roses are the favorite flower of President Coriolanus Snow: His grandmother grew roses on the roof of the apartment building he lived in as a youth,[8] and his mother perfumed herself with rose-scented powder.[9] Later in life, roses became something of an unofficial emblem for President Snow, as he frequently wore one in his jacket lapel.[10][11][6][12]

During her time in The Hunger Games and during the Second Rebellion, the rose became a symbol that Katniss strongly associated with Snow.

Catching Fire[]

When President Snow met Katniss prior to her Victory Tour, he wore a rose in his jacket lapel, and the smell was so strong that Katniss thought the scent must've been genetically enhanced.[13]

Mockingjay[]

Snow leaves a white rose in Katniss's house, which she finds when she comes back to visit her home after the bombing of District 12.[14]

Red and pink roses (white in the film) were dropped after the bombing of District 13, which Katniss believed to be from President Snow, and like the white rose she found in her house in the Victors' Village, were there to upset her.[15]

Finnick Odair later reveals that, according to Capitol gossip, Snow uses the scent-enhanced roses to hide the ever-present smell of blood that comes from his mouth sores; during his rise to power - and in an effort to keep it - Snow poisoned any potential rivals and often deflected suspicion by consuming the poisoned drink himself. While he possessed antidotes to these poisons, they didn't always work, so the mouth sores were a constant problem.[16]

When in the Capitol, Squad 451 is attacked by mutts that smell like roses, and Katniss describes this type of mutt as one that incorporates a psychological twist to truly frighten the victim. The scent-enhanced roses worn by Snow are grown in a special room in the presidential mansion; white roses are the president's favorite, but red, pink, orange, and pale blue ones are also cultivated. Towards the end of Mockingjay, Katniss is in Snow's mansion when she finds herself in his rose room. The putrid stench of roses sickens her to the point of gagging.[17]

The roses reminded her of Peeta because the same type of white roses were in the room during one of Peeta and Katniss's interviews in the Capitol right after winning their first Hunger Games.

Real-life connection[]

Roses possess powerful symbolic meaning in real life. In the broadest traditional sense, they have embodied positive traits such as love and beauty, but as a writer, Suzanne Collins reverses this symbolism; within Katniss' experience, something that is normally pretty is turned into something painful and fear-inducing.

Rue[]

Rue is named after a yellow flower of the same name, which Katniss mentions grows in the Meadow, an area just outside her house on the outskirts of District 12.[18]

Tiger lilies[]

Tiger lilies

A tiger lily

Catching Fire[]

Shortly before her Victory Tour, President Snow makes an unexpected visit to Katniss' new house in the Victors' Village. Acting the good hostess, Mrs. Everdeen offers him tea and a plate of cookies. The cookies were made by Peeta, as revealed by the beautifully frosted tiger lily on top of one of them.[19]

Wildflowers[]

Wildflowers

Wildflowers

"I want to do something, right here, right now, to shame them, to make them accountable, to show the Capitol that whatever they do or force us to do there is a part of every tribute they can't own. That Rue was more than a piece in their games. And so am I."
—Katniss Everdeen[src]

The Hunger Games[]

After Rue was killed by Marvel, Katniss covered her with white, yellow, and purple wildflowers, both to cover her wound and in an attempt to show the Capitol that they were responsible for her death. She covered Rue's body and wound the flowers in her hair to make her look like she was really sleeping in a meadow.[20] When they were returning to District 12, Peeta and Katniss walked down the train track, and Peeta collected a bunch of wildflowers to give to Katniss. Katniss did not tell him that these flowers were the tops of onions, which reminded her of Gale.[21]

Catching Fire[]

During his individual training session, Peeta painted a picture of how Rue looked when covered in flowers, an action which provoked the Capitol into giving him a perfect score, thus making him a target.[22]

Trivia[]

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 The Hunger Games, Chapter 1
  2. The Hunger Games, Chapter 18
  3. The Hunger Games (film)
  4. The Hunger Games, Chapter 4
  5. The Hunger Games, Chapter 15
  6. 6.0 6.1 Mockingjay, Chapter 9
  7. Mockingjay, Chapter 27
  8. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 1
  9. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 5
  10. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 11
  11. Catching Fire, Chapter 2
  12. Mockingjay, Chapter 21
  13. Catching Fire, Chapter 2
  14. Mockingjay, Chapter 1
  15. Mockingjay, Chapter 11
  16. Mockingjay, Chapter 12
  17. Mockingjay, Chapter 25
  18. The Hunger Games, Chapter 7
  19. Catching Fire, Chapter 3
  20. The Hunger Games, Chapter 18
  21. The Hunger Games, Chapter 27
  22. Catching Fire, Chapter 17
  23. Catching Fire, Chapter 14
  24. Mockingjay, Chapter 2
Advertisement