The lake is located several hours into the woods outside District 12, with an old concrete house at its edge.[1]
Description[]
The lake was small, surrounded by blossoms and greenery in the summer. Waterfowl nested along the shore with their eggs in the grasses, and katniss plants grew in the shallows.[2] A number of fish swam in its waters, and blackberries also grew in the vicinity. Snakes could often be found in a patch near the rocks. When setting out from District 12, the lake was about two or three hours into the woods, depending on the briars.[3]
The lake house[]
The house by the lake had a concrete floor, roof, ceiling, and walls. It was comprised only of one room, about twelve square feet in area.[1] There was no plumbing or electricity, but it had a working fireplace. The house had a door and four glass windows, one on each wall,[4] but eventually only one window remained, wavy and yellowed with age.[1]
History[]
Mr. Everdeen thought there used to be a lot of other buildings by the lake "a long time ago" where people could come to play and fish, as the foundations of those buildings were still visible.[1]
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes[]
In the prequel, the lake was like a "second home" to the Covey of District 12. Peacekeepers Coriolanus Snow and Sejanus Plinth once accompanied them there to swim, fish, and harvest katniss, which had not been ready to eat quite yet. That day, Lucy Gray Baird revealed to Coriolanus that her ex-lover Billy Taupe Clade wanted her to run away with him.[3] She and Coriolanus later made plans of their own to do the same.[5]
However, shortly after taking refuge from the rain in the lake house, Coriolanus turned against Lucy Gray. He fired wildly into the trees with his rifle, then sank it to the bottom of the lake along with several other incriminating firearms before he returned to District 12 alone.[4] Lucy Gray went missing that day, and it is unknown whether she lived or died.[6] The woods around the lake were the last place she was heard from alive. She was singing "The Hanging Tree" just before Coriolanus opened fire.[4]
The Hunger Games trilogy[]
According to Katniss Everdeen, her father found the lake one day while hunting, and he took her there several times when she was young. He taught her to swim on hot summer days, they harvested katniss roots together, and he hunted waterfowl as she collected their eggs.[2] They also gathered firewood, and he allowed her to play house in the old concrete structure with a twig broom he fashioned.[1]
Catching Fire[]
Katniss never took Gale Hawthorne to the lake before her Victory Tour,[2] but she led him there the Sunday after the Harvest Festival in hopes of privacy. There, they discussed the possibility of running away from District 12. Gale initially agreed with the idea, but he changed his mind when he learned of the uprising in District 8, and he was determined to stay and fight.[1] Katniss later met two refugees from District 8, Bonnie and Twill, who stopped to rest in the old house on their way to District 13.[7]
Mockingjay[]
Following the events of the 75th Hunger Games and the bombing of District 12,[8] Gale brought around 800 survivors to the lake. While Mrs. Everdeen and Prim tended to the wounded, he and a team of other able-bodied volunteers kept the group fed for three days, hunting and fishing until they were discovered and rescued by District 13 hovercraft.[9]
After shooting propos in the ruins of District 12 and hiking through the woods, Katniss, Gale, and a camera crew took a lunch break at the lake. A request from Pollux prompted Katniss to sing "The Hanging Tree" for the first time in ten years.[10]
Trivia[]
- This is not the only lake in the woods; Katniss and Gale went fishing at a different lake the morning of the reaping for the 74th Hunger Games.[11]
- In The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, the lake scene was filmed at Bellwood Quarry in Atlanta, Georgia.[12]
- Lake scenes for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes were allegedly filmed at Zalew Grzędy, a reservoir in Poland.[13]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Catching Fire, Chapter 7
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Catching Fire, Chapter 3
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 27
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 30
- ↑ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Chapter 28
- ↑ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Epilogue
- ↑ Catching Fire, Chapter 10
- ↑ Catching Fire, Chapter 27
- ↑ Mockingjay, Chapter 1
- ↑ Mockingjay, Chapter 9
- ↑ The Hunger Games, Chapter 1
- ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951265/locations/?item=lc1048482
- ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/ChILbfHpudp/