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The Mockingjay is one of the most important symbols in The Hunger Games saga. But where did it come from, and why did Katniss don the title?
Like other successful sci-fi epics, The Hunger Games succeeds in part by creating a very convincing future world. The nation of Panem — arising on the North American continent at some unspecified date following a series of wars and ecological catastrophes — is both instantly recognizable and compellingly alien. That comes in large gestures and small, which combine to make its universe so distinctive.
The saga’s reluctant heroine, Katniss Everdeen, eventually embraces one such symbol as her mantle. She becomes known as the “Mockingjay” as her conflict with Panem’s autocratic leaders escalates into civil war. By the end of the saga, it’s as much a part of her identity as her signature bow and arrows. But what is a mockingjay, and why is it so attached to Katniss’ character?
The concept is important enough to grace the cover of the original trilogy of novels, as well as serving as the title for the third and final entry in the trilogy and playing a huge role in the marketing of the blockbuster film adaptations. Specifically, it’s the pin of a mockingjay, which Katniss acquires from a friend’s aunt in the books and a local vendor in the first movie. That makes it a symbol of her district first and foremost — a coal-heavy region of the Appalachian Mountains driven to poverty by the oppression of the Capitol. Once she’s selected for the Hunger Games, her handlers hit upon it as a way of marketing her — most notably, Cinna, her stylist, who designed both her dress and the armor she later wore as part of the armed uprising. Coupled with the moniker he gave her — “the girl on fire” — it turned the mockingjay into a potent symbol of the revolution.
The bird itself aptly matches the theme, as author Suzanne Collins noted in the second novel of the series, Catching Fire. The saga takes place 70-odd years after a failed revolt against the Capitol. The Games themselves are a punitive measure designed to cow and humiliate those Districts who defied their rulers. During the war, the Capitol bioengineered a new species of bird to help them spy on the rebels. Dubbed jabberjays, they had the ability to remember entire conversations and repeat them back verbatim to their creators. The rebels quickly learned about the tactic and used them to feed lies back to the Capitol. They were pronounced a failure and released into the wilds, where — since they were bred to be exclusively male — it was assumed they would die off.
The act had unforeseen consequences, though. The jabberjays did die off but not before mating with local mockingbirds and producing a hybrid species. Mockingjays couldn’t learn or articulate words, but they could mimic voices and sounds they heard. Katniss’s father knew how to teach them songs via whistling, which he conveyed to her before his death in a mining accident. The movie saga’s four-note theme is intended to emulate their cry, and the connection to her father further strengthens Katniss’s connection to the mockingjay, as does the use of the pin, which becomes an elaborate method Katniss uses to convince her sister Primrose that it has protective powers.
And beyond the direct links, the similarities between her and her namesake stack up quickly. The Hunger Games are intended to help keep the populace in line, giving subjugated districts hope in an otherwise meaningless contest as a means of blunting their taste for rebellion. Katniss’s participation — even her unexpected victory — is intended to serve that end. President Snow, in particular, makes constant efforts to control her actions, whether in the arena or out. That ends up backfiring on him — much as the original mockingjays did for his predecessors — as Katniss’s defiance becomes the catalyst of a new rebellion.
As deeply as Collins invested the bird with meaning — and as effectively as the movies emulated her approach — it’s the mockingjay’s alien qualities that help sell the world. Contemporary audiences can see shades of the real world in her fictional future, along with something utterly different created by a very familiar kind of human arrogance. It’s part of what made the story so strong, and why the dark future it conveys remains so compelling.
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