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Description
Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run so we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

___

Been planning this picture for a while, but it took seeing the movie of Catching Fire, and the amazing credits song Silhouettes, which I think is very much in the same vein as The Hanging Tree, to get me to do it.

Spoilers

The movie exceeded my expectations, I must say, but a big thing they had to leave out because in a movie you don't have as direct an insight into Katniss's thoughts, is why she was doing what she was doing in that bit at the end when she was sneaking around with the syringe. In the book, it's made clear that her intention is to find Peeta and kill him, so that the Capitol couldn't get at him anymore.
One of the things this series does perfectly is showing death as both terrifying and something to run from, and as an escape from the horrors of life. I've talked before about what sells dystopian fiction is the 'loss of self' that comes as a universal human reaction to the most extreme suffering. Part of that is also losing a great deal of one's sense of personal morality, and a lot of blurring of lines. When Katniss plans to kill Peeta and herself, it is in no way malicious or from depression, respectively. It's a panicked act of love in the realization that death is the only way in which they can ever escape from the Capitol, and the games. And Finnick said the same about Annie, that he wished she was dead, rather than in the hands of the Capitol's torture. Really, what Haymitch said about there being no "winners" makes more sense when you compare the victors' lives, particularly Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick's, to the lives of tributes like Rue, who died in the arena and never had to serve the Capitol again. This is further addressed in Mockingjay by the above song, and all its implications.

I think a lot of people don't understand longing for death, and that it's not always wrong. A lot of Old Testament saints prayed for death. As one gets older, losing more friends and family, watching everything of one's childhood crumbling away, and, now more than ever, seeing society spiral down into an actual dystopia where babies and old people are killed if they are the slightest inconvenience, where perversions of every kind are hailed as the highest good, where diseases with no cure are ignored, and where people hate God, then one begins to see that death is the only way in which we will ever triumph. In Sunday school I was told that no matter how happy you are, on earth you can't ever be completely happy, and that complete happiness can only be found in Heaven. Though no one ever said it, what that means is that before you can ever be truly happy, you have to die.

A lot of people are afraid of dying, but I'm not. It's the pain and the horror and the sorrow that lie between where I am now and the time that God chooses to take me. That's what scares me.

The Hunger Games copyright Suzanne Collins

Description
Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where they strung up a man they say murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out for his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run so we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope, side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met up at midnight in the hanging tree.

___

Been planning this picture for a while, but it took seeing the movie of Catching Fire, and the amazing credits song Silhouettes, which I think is very much in the same vein as The Hanging Tree, to get me to do it.

Spoilers

The movie exceeded my expectations, I must say, but a big thing they had to leave out because in a movie you don't have as direct an insight into Katniss's thoughts, is why she was doing what she was doing in that bit at the end when she was sneaking around with the syringe. In the book, it's made clear that her intention is to find Peeta and kill him, so that the Capitol couldn't get at him anymore.
One of the things this series does perfectly is showing death as both terrifying and something to run from, and as an escape from the horrors of life. I've talked before about what sells dystopian fiction is the 'loss of self' that comes as a universal human reaction to the most extreme suffering. Part of that is also losing a great deal of one's sense of personal morality, and a lot of blurring of lines. When Katniss plans to kill Peeta and herself, it is in no way malicious or from depression, respectively. It's a panicked act of love in the realization that death is the only way in which they can ever escape from the Capitol, and the games. And Finnick said the same about Annie, that he wished she was dead, rather than in the hands of the Capitol's torture. Really, what Haymitch said about there being no "winners" makes more sense when you compare the victors' lives, particularly Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick's, to the lives of tributes like Rue, who died in the arena and never had to serve the Capitol again. This is further addressed in Mockingjay by the above song, and all its implications.

I think a lot of people don't understand longing for death, and that it's not always wrong. A lot of Old Testament saints prayed for death. As one gets older, losing more friends and family, watching everything of one's childhood crumbling away, and, now more than ever, seeing society spiral down into an actual dystopia where babies and old people are killed if they are the slightest inconvenience, where perversions of every kind are hailed as the highest good, where diseases with no cure are ignored, and where people hate God, then one begins to see that death is the only way in which we will ever triumph. In Sunday school I was told that no matter how happy you are, on earth you can't ever be completely happy, and that complete happiness can only be found in Heaven. Though no one ever said it, what that means is that before you can ever be truly happy, you have to die.

A lot of people are afraid of dying, but I'm not. It's the pain and the horror and the sorrow that lie between where I am now and the time that God chooses to take me. That's what scares me.

The Hunger Games copyright Suzanne Collins