Compare how Coriolanus Snow and Katniss Everdeen thought the Hanging Tree was about.
Pages 485-487 in The Ballad of Songbirds And Snakes:
The Hanging Tree. Her old meeting spot with Billy Taupe. That's where she wanted him to meet her. Who did she mean? Billy Taupe telling her to come there so they'd be free? Her telling him (meaning Coriolanus) tonight that they'd be free? Now he got it. The song, the speaker of the song, was Billy Taupe, and he was singing it to Lucy Gray. He'd witnessed Arlo's death, heard the birds call out his last words, begged Lucy Gray to run away to freedom with him, and when she'd rejected him, he'd wanted her to hang with him rather than get to live without him. Coriolanus hoped this was the final Billy Taupe song. What else could be said really? Not that it mattered. This might be his song, but she was singing it to Coriolanus. Snow lands on top.
Page 125-126 in Mockingjay:
Being older? I began to understand the lyrics. At the beginning, it sounds like a guy is trying to get his girlfriend to secretly meet up with him at midnight. But it's an odd place for a tryst, a hanging tree, where a man was hung for murder. The murderer's lover must have had something to do with the killing, or maybe they were just going to punish her anyway, because his corpse called out for her to flee. That's weird obviously, the talking-corpse bit, but it's not until the third verse that "The Hanging Tree" begins to get unnerving. You realize the singer of the song is the dead murderer. He's still in the hanging tree. And even though he told his lover to flee, he keeps asking her if she's coming to meet him. The phrase "Where I told you to run, so we'd both be free" is the most troubling because at first you think he's talking about when he told her to flee, presumably to safety, but then you wonder if he meant for her to run to him. To death. In the final stanza, it's clear that that's what he's waiting for. His lover, with her rope necklace, hanging dead next to him in the tree.
I used the think the murderer was the creepiest guy imaginable. Now, with a couple of trips to the Hunger Games under my belt, I decide not to judge him without knowing more details. Maybe his lover was already sentenced to death and he was trying to make it easier. To let her know that he'd be waiting. Or maybe he thought the place he was leaving her was really worse than death.
Page 485-487 of The Ballad of Songbirds And Snakes Pages 125-126 of Mockingjay
I'm starting to think that the Hanging Tree is about Coriolanus Snow because in the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, he admitted that he killed three people and lied about the third death which was when he beat the District 8 male Bobbin to death with a wooden board after he attempted to get his best friend Sejanus Plinth out of the arena because of a ritual that the people of District 2 do when someone is dead, which is to sprinkle bread crumbs over the dead body in a message to the dead person to move onto the next life.
Coriolanus thought that The Hanging Tree was about her ex-boyfriend Billy Taupe and Katniss, not knowing who the song was directed to, just thought that some guy wanted his lover to hang dead beside him in the Hanging Tree. We're not exactly sure who this is directed to, but we can assume that the song is directed to Coriolanus, since Lucy Gray sang it.
The Hanging Tree Song in "The Hunger Games" trilogy was interpreted differently by Katniss Everdeen and Coriolanus Snow:
- Katniss Everdeen saw it as a rebellious anthem about self-sacrifice, while Snow interpreted it as a warning of his own death.
- Katniss understood the song better as a Hunger Games victor, while Snow had a literal understanding but missed its poetic aspects.
If you've seen the movie, there was a scene where Arlo Chance was hung for murdering three people after trying to bomb the coal mining production but accidentally killed three people in the process. After his hanging, Lucy Gray was inspired to make "The Hanging Tree" song.
