The Importance of Madge Undersee

In the interest of including a bunch of my literary ramblings, here's an informal essay I wrote of my own volition in September of 2011 about Madge Undersee, an underrated character in the Hunger Games trilogy. It is about 4,500 words long, and CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL THREE BOOKS. It was also written before the film came out, but still holds up, and was originally posted online in ~other places.

When I first heard that The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was going to be made into a film, of course I was excited. Wary, maybe, but excited in the way that you get when a book you absolutely love is coming to the big screen, because it means you will be able to share your love with other people and experience the book again in a different light.

And of course, I was eager to see who had been cast as whom, and would periodically check the IMDB page for updates on that front. But when the casting became fixed, and all of the characters were filled out, I realized someone was missing: Madge Undersee, the daughter of District Twelve’s mayor and Katniss’s friend. The very girl with whom Katniss’s mockingjay pin originates. A bit of Googling confirmed that Madge was not, in fact, going to be included in the film.

This... did not sit well with me. I have since found an article that more or less describes the new origin of Katniss’s pin – at least, how it stood during a draft stage of the script. The idea is sort of nice, if a little Hollywood... but arguably, not as effective as Madge giving Katniss the pin, both in terms of the plot and Katniss’s character development.

Because the thing is, Madge is important, and not just because of the pin. She is important to Katniss as a character (and as a person), to the reader, and to the overall story. And she's important as an entity unto herself.

→ Madge is important to Katniss as the person who gives Katniss the mockingjay pin.

Yes, this is the big one, so I’ll tackle it first. After Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place at the Reaping for the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games, she is ushered into a room where she will be able to say goodbye to her friends and family. Two of the people who visit her in this room come as a surprise to her: Peeta Mellark’s father, and Madge Undersee.

My next guest is also unexpected. Madge walks straight to me. She is not weepy or evasive, instead there’s an urgency about her tone that surprises me. “They let you wear one thing from your district in the arena. One thing to remind you of home. Will you wear this?” She holds out the circular gold pin that was on her dress earlier. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before, but now I see it’s a small bird in flight.

“Your pin?” I say. Wearing a token from my district is about the last thing on my mind.

“Here, I’ll put it on your dress, all right?” Madge doesn’t wait for an answer, she just leans in and fixes the bird to my dress. “Promise you’ll wear it into the arena, Katniss?” she asks. “Promise?”

“Yes,” I say.

- The Hunger Games, page 38

Only after Katniss and Peeta board the tribute train does Katniss realize what is on the pin Madge has given her: a mockingjay. Of mockingjays, we learn:

They’re funny birds and something of a slap in the face to the Capitol. During the rebellion, the Capitol bred a series of genetically altered animals as weapons.... One was a special bird called a jabberjay that had the ability to memorize and repeat whole human conversations. They were homing birds, exclusively male, that were released into regions where the Capitol’s enemies were known to be hiding. After the birds gathered words, they’d fly back to centers to be recorded. It took people awhile to realize what was going on in the districts, how private conversations were being transmitted. Then, of course, the rebels fed the Capitol endless lies, and the joke was on it. So the centers were shut down and the birds were abandoned to die off in the wild.

Only they didn’t die off. Instead, the jabberjays mated with female mockingbirds creating a whole new species that could replicate both bird whistles and human melodies.

- The Hunger Games, pages 42-43

So three-quarters of a century ago, the mockingjay became a symbol of rebellion, much as it will do again later. There’s a good chance that Madge doesn’t know the history of the mockingjay. There’s a good chance that she’s just trying to do the only thing she can for a friend who is almost guaranteed to be dead in a few weeks. But after Katniss makes it through her first Games and is forced to take part in a second, both she and the reader are made to reconsider Madge’s ignorance.

In preparing for the Third Quarter Quell, Katniss and Peeta watch the tapes of the victorious tributes they will be facing, as well as the tapes of the Second Quarter Quell, won by their mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, twenty-five years prior. Before Haymitch’s name is called on the tape, however, that of one of the female tributes from District Twelve is called: Maysilee Donner. Katniss vaguely recognizes the name as someone who was friends with her mother.

The camera finds [Maysilee] in the crowd, clinging to two other girls. All blond. All definitely merchants’ kids.

“I think that’s your mother hugging her,” says Peeta quietly. And he’s right. As Maysilee Donner bravely disengages herself and heads for the stage, I catch a glimpse of my mother at my age.... Holding her hand and weeping is another girl who looks just like Maysilee. But a lot like someone else I know, too.

“Madge,” I say.

“That’s her mother. She and Maysilee were twins or something,” Peeta says. “My dad mentioned it once.”

I think of Madge’s mother. Mayor Undersee’s wife. Who spends half her life in bed immobilized with terrible pain, shutting out the world.... Of my mockingjay pin and how it means something completely different now that I know that its former owner was Madge’s aunt, Maysilee Donner, a tribute who was murdered in the arena.

- Catching Fire, pages 196-197

Madge has grown up with this story in the background of her life. Even if her parents don’t talk about what happened with Maysilee much, Madge can still plainly see the aftereffects of it in her mother who, according to Katniss, “spends half her life in bed immobilized with terrible pain, shutting out the world.”

Was Maysilee a rebel? From what we can see, no. Like the other tributes, her goal was simply to stay alive, even if she ultimately failed. But this failure deeply scarred Maysilee’s family. It nearly crippled Madge’s mother, and continues to cripple her, even twenty-five years later. Madge knows enough to be able to tell that the Capitol and their Games have taken something from her family, which would give her more than enough impetus to rebel in whatever small way she can, even if she claims to not know what the mockingjays really represent by once saying, “But mockingjays were never a weapon.... They’re just songbirds. Right?”

So does Madge mean for the mockingjay pin to become a symbol of the new rebellion? Probably not.

She isn’t stupid, though. Katniss describes her as someone who isn’t “a snob,” and “just keeps to herself” (Hunger Games 12). When Gale compliments Madge’s fine Reaping clothes, she “shoots him a look, trying to see if it’s a genuine compliment or if he’s just being ironic” (12). She’s smart enough to not simply take Gale’s statement at face value. And this is how she eventually responds (emphasis mine):

[Madge] presses her lips together and then smiles. “Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don’t I?”

Now it’s Gale’s turn to be confused. Does she mean it? Or is she messing with him? I’m guessing the second.

- The Hunger Games, page 12

She’s being ironic here, her tone matching the ambiguity of Gale’s comment with ease. Madge is subtle, and to me, at least, that kind of irony requires intelligence to pull off. So she’s certainly capable of recognizing at least some of the power in the mockingjay pin. (And this is purely my own opinion, but I think Collins underestimates Madge a bit by later having her question Katniss’s statement about mockingjays being weapons; it feels incongruous to me, given what I’ve already written about Madge, and what follows – and even what Collins has implied in the passage where Katniss discovers to whom the pin originally belonged.)

The pin is not something that Madge would give away as a simple token. When Katniss first sees Madge’s pin attached to her Reaping dress, she notices that it’s made of “[r]eal gold” and that it “could keep a family in bread for months” (12). It has a high monetary value, but also, as we (and Katniss) discover, a high sentimental value, too, because it belonged to Madge’s late aunt. This pin is not something with which to part lightly.

Recall also how Madge’s tone has “urgency” to it when she gives Katniss the pin (38). How she makes Katniss promise to wear it in the arena. This feels wrong for a simple ‘think of me/home’ kind of token. It’s like she wants and needs for the Capitol to see the pin; if she actually does know what the mockingjay means – which, as I’ve said, she may not, but hypothetically speaking – it would be like she wants for them to remember that people aren’t happy with what they have done to the districts, and that these people haven’t always just lied down and taken what comes. Either way, I think that Madge doesn’t want to start a rebellion with the fixing of a golden pin to her friend’s clothes; she simply wants someone to remember what her family has lost, and what she will lose now.

Nobody could really predict what the mockingjay pin would come to symbolize. When Katniss supposedly defies the Capitol by threatening it with the double suicide of herself and Peeta, she is honestly just trying to keep them both alive, and is not trying to start a new rebellion. In fact, she’s shocked to realize what her actions have set into motion. She does question these actions later, wondering if they were an unconscious act of defiance. But, she says, “The trouble is, I don’t know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment” (Catching Fire 118). To me, at least, all of her previous actions during the Games suggest that she was aiming for survival, not defiance.

Whether she likes it or not, Katniss becomes a symbol of the rebellion, and the rebels latch onto the image on her pin. Which brings Katniss to a profound revelation and one of the most powerful statements I have ever read: “I am the mockingjay” (386).

Katniss becomes the mockingjay. And this is why Madge’s gift of the pin is absolutely integral to the storyline: she actually gives a part of Katniss’s power and identity to Katniss, unwittingly or otherwise. Madge indirectly drives Katniss to what she becomes.

Yes, if Katniss didn’t have the pin and still threatened to eat the poisoned berries, the rebels might still have taken to her and made her the symbol of their actions. They might have found some other title or nickname for her. Except, that isn’t what happened. Katniss does get the pin, and the proof of the importance of that to her identity can be found in the title of the final book of the trilogy.

Even Katniss herself recognizes Madge’s contribution to this. After she finds out that Madge and her family died when District Twelve was destroyed, Katniss thinks, “Madge. Quiet and kind and brave. The girl who gave me the pin that gave me a name” (Mockingjay 384).

I'd also like to point out Madge's surname: Undersee. Madge doesn't oversee. She 'undersees.' She is subtly present throughout everything, her first official act of friendship running through the fate of Panem like a current.

→ Madge is important to Katniss as Katniss’s only female friend, and one of the few females in Katniss’s life.

Katniss’s best (and seemingly only) friend is Gale Hawthorn – a friendship which arose out of the necessity of hunting for survival. They are quite similar, both in the way they think (to a certain extent) and their temperament.

Enter Madge.

The mayor’s daughter, Madge, opens the door. She’s in my year at school. Being the mayor’s daughter, you’d expect her to be a snob, but she’s all right. She just keeps to herself. Like me. Since neither of us really has a group of friends, we seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at assemblies, partnering for sports activities. We rarely talk, which suits us both just fine.

- The Hunger Games, page 12

Madge is similar to Katniss, too, but in a different way, I think. To me, Gale seems... intense. (And rightly so.) I don’t get that kind of feeling from Madge.

At this point, Katniss seems to classify her and Madge’s relationship as one of acquaintances or allies, rather than friends. But then, Madge gives Katniss the mockingjay pin. Katniss reflects:

Cookies. A pin. I’m getting all kinds of gifts today. Madge gives me one more. A kiss on the cheek. Then she’s gone and I’m left thinking that maybe Madge really has been my friend all along.

- The Hunger Games, page 38

Now Katniss officially has two friends: Gale, and Madge. As I mentioned above, Madge is less intense than Gale, and ultimately, she’s good for Katniss to have as a friend. Gale is arguably good for her, too, but again, in a different way. In Catching Fire, Katniss reflects on her changed relationship with Madge:

After I got home, we started spending time together. It turns out Madge has plenty of empty hours to fill, too. It was a little awkward at first because we didn’t know what to do. Other girls our age, I’ve heard them talking about boys, or other girls, or clothes. Madge and I aren’t gossipy and clothes bore me to tears. But after a few false starts, I realized she was dying to go into the woods, so I’ve taken her a couple of times and showed her how to shoot. She’s trying to teach me the piano, but mostly I like to listen to her play. Sometimes we eat at each other’s houses.

- Catching Fire, page 87

Katniss’s friendship with Madge is refreshingly normal. Yes, Katniss does sneak Madge out into the woods so that they can poach, but you can view that as Katniss showing Madge a slice of her world, while Madge teaching Katniss to play the piano can be Madge showing Katniss a slice of hers. And what do normal friends do but explore each other’s interests? Madge and Katniss talk, and they hang out. So much of Katniss’s life is abnormal, and entrenched in the idea that she needs not to live, but to survive, that it is healthy (and a nice break) for her to be able to experience the companionship that can arise between two teenage girls.

This goes back to the differences between Katniss’s friendship with Gale and her friendship with Madge – and honestly, it connects to the main reason why I prefer Peeta and Katniss together over Gale and Katniss. Gale is so intense, and thus so like Katniss, that I feel like they would consume each other. Nothing would ever be light, everything just so heavy. Like Peeta, Madge is lighter. To me, at least, it seems that Katniss needs someone like that in order to balance her out.

Another thing about Madge is that she doesn’t necessarily need Katniss to take care of her. Look at the main females in Katniss’s life: her mother, and Prim.

Katniss’s relationship with her mother has been strained ever since Katniss’s father died, and her mother fell into a deep, debilitating depression that forced Katniss to care for herself and her little sister – which is why Katniss has had to take out so many tesserae, putting her name in multiple times for the Reaping in exchange for food. Katniss reflects on all of this, and how she felt when her mother finally began to emerge from her depression:

Prim was thrilled to have her back, but I kept watching, waiting for her to disappear on us again. I didn’t trust her. And some small gnarled place inside me hated her for her weakness, for her neglect, for the months she had put us through. Prim forgave her, but I had taken a step back from my mother, put up a wall to protect myself from needing her, and nothing was ever the same between us again.

- The Hunger Games, page 53

For a large part of her life, Katniss has been the breadwinner for her family; they rely on her to go into the woods and hunt and forage, to bring back some of that food for them, or to sell it, or trade it at the Hob for other food or supplies. Katniss is like a mother to Prim, eventually making the ultimate maternal sacrifice by taking Prim’s place in the Games. Before District Twelve is destroyed, Prim and their mother need Katniss in their daily lives; without her, they would die.

This isn’t the case with Madge. Mayor Undersee buys strawberries and game from Katniss (and Gale), so they do get some food from her. But without her, his family wouldn’t starve to death. Madge keeps Katniss in her life not because she needs to, but because she wants to. Again, there is a sense of normality to this dynamic of their relationship, a normality that the dynamics between Katniss and her mother and Prim lack. With Madge, Katniss doesn’t have to be the breadwinner. She is allowed to relax and be herself, a normal teenage girl.

→ Madge is important to Katniss in helping her (and readers) understand the truth behind wealth, class divisions, and power in the districts.

As the Mayor’s daughter, Madge sometimes surprises Katniss. Katniss thinks of Madge, “you’d expect her to be a snob, but she’s all right” (12). The Undersees are rich, especially in comparison to families from the Seam, who fight starvation every day. They have a nice house, and Madge wears nice clothes; she is a foil to Katniss, who is poor. Madge doesn’t live up to Katniss’s class-based expectations, though. She’s still a nice person despite her apparent wealth.

But are the Undersees even as rich as Katniss thinks? Consider this conversation with Rue during the Games:

“I’d have thought, in District Eleven, you’d have a bit more to eat than us. You know, since you grow the food,” I say.

Rue’s eyes widen. “Oh, no, we’re not allowed to eat the crops.”

“They arrest you or something?” I ask.

“They whip you and make everyone else watch,” says Rue.

...

“Do you get all the coal you want?” Rue asks.

“No,” I answer. “Just what we buy and whatever we track in on our boots.”

- The Hunger Games, pages 282-283

Katniss is starting to realize something here. She’s always thought that the people of District Eleven could indulge in the wealth of their crops, and Rue seems to have thought that the people of District Twelve could languish in the riches of their coal. Both of these assumptions are wrong, though.

The Undersees have a fancy house and fancy clothes, but they still get meat and strawberries from Katniss – the mayor has a “particular fondness” for strawberries, and presumably shares them with his family (12). Yes, the prices for these are exorbitant, and yes, the Undersees can afford to pay that price. But think about it: some of the ‘treats’ in their lives are things that they can’t obtain legally. Their wealth legally would have been unable to get them as far as they are; even though they’re comparatively rich, they still live in the poorest, most neglected district.

I don’t think Katniss explicitly makes the connection between what Rue says about District Eleven and the Undersees, but it’s there for readers to see. People aren’t as wealthy as they seem outside of the Capitol. Class means nothing when all of the classes are still under the Capitol’s thumb. And this realization is one of the many things that makes Katniss more willing to participate (and partly lead) the revolution; the way things are are wrong.

There is some truth to Madge’s wealth, of course, but that’s important, too – to readers. Perhaps this is a lesser point than the others, but Collins has created this world so different from our own that we rely on her to paint a picture of it as vividly as possible so that we can experience it, too. So when it comes to the workings of the wealth and class of this dystopian world, Madge serves not only as a foil to Katniss, but someone to help broaden the readers’ view of Collins’s world.

You can also link the illusion of class and wealth to that of power, too. In the end, when Katniss comes back to the destroyed District Twelve, she discovers from Thom, an old crewmate of Gale’s, that the entire Undersee family perished. Katniss says hesitantly,

“I thought maybe, since he was the mayor...”

“I don’t think being the mayor of Twelve put the odds in his favor,” says Thom.

- Mockingjay, page 384

I think with Thom’s statement, Collins means to say that Mayor Undersee was being punished for being the mayor of the district that harbored Katniss “The Mockingjay” Everdeen. But I think you could also tack onto the end of Thom’s sentence, anymore than the rest of us. When you’re faced with the Capitol’s wrath, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor; the odds really aren’t in your favor either way, and you have no more power than anyone else.

Katniss touches a bit on this earlier when she is at Madge’s house, and she suggests that Madge’s mother go to the Capitol to treat the “fierce headaches that force her to stay in bed for days” (Catching Fire 87), because surely the people at the Capitol have that capability. Madge replies, “Yes. But you don’t go to the Capitol unless they invite you,” and Katniss thinks, “Even the mayor’s privileges are limited” (87).

→ Madge is important to Katniss as a kind of competition, however unfounded.

All right, so this point isn’t the most important or interesting, but I do think it’s worth mentioning. After Gale is whipped by the new, strict Peacekeepers, and is taken to Katniss’s mother for treatment, Madge risks everything by taking a box of morphling (like our morphine) to Katniss’s house. An alternate motivation behind Madge’s actions presents itself.

“I didn’t even know Madge knew Gale,” says Peeta.

“We used to sell her strawberries,” I say almost angrily. What am I angry about, though? Not that she has brought the medicine, surely.

“She must have quite a taste for them,” says Haymitch.

That’s what nettles me. It’s the implication that there’s something going on between Gale and Madge. And I don’t like it.

“She’s my friend” is all I say.

- Catching Fire, page 116

Katniss is truly jealous of Madge for perhaps the first time, because Haymitch implies (and Katniss briefly but irrationally wonders at) a romantic connection between Gale and Madge. This goes back to the sense of normalcy. Jealousy, to this degree, is arguably normal for a teenage girl, because it results in the kind of bloodless competition that Katniss isn’t used to. So unlike with Peeta, where every moment of Katniss’s budding relationship with him may or may not be real, and may or not be integral to their survival, Katniss can sort out her feelings for Gale in her own time and fashion.

There probably isn’t anything going on between Gale and Madge, and Katniss doesn’t seem to think of Madge as any less a friend than she was before, but still, it is a situation that Madge unwittingly forces Katniss to experience.

→ Finally, Madge is important because she is Madge Undersee, coping with and living in a dystopian world.

Okay, so it’s true. Despite the events that Madge unknowingly (or otherwise) sets in motion, she isn’t a big focus in the series. She isn’t the most important character, and she doesn’t get much screen time. In the 2006 film “The Holiday,” one character says to another, “Iris, in the movies we have leading ladies and we have the best friend.” Madge is not the leading lady. For the most part, she is one of those sorts of characters whose main purpose is nothing more than to help the main character on their ‘journey,’ so to speak. She is firmly cast in this ‘best friend’ role. But even in the background, she does start to change and develop enough that I don’t think she can be considered flat.

As quoted above a while ago in regards to their friendship post-Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, Katniss reflects, “...I realized [Madge] was dying to go into the woods, so I’ve taken her a couple of times and showed her how to shoot” (Catching Fire 87). I don’t think it’s just that Madge wants to go into the woods to see how wonderful they are after Katniss has told her all about them. I think she’s realizing that the world is changing and has changed, maybe without her truly knowing it, and that she needs to be ready to deal with that. She doesn’t want to be helpless. She wants to know how to take care of herself and survive.

Madge takes a stand on other matters, too. Again, as mentioned above, Madge brings a box of morphling to Katniss’s mother after Gale is whipped.

When [Katniss’s mother] opens [the door], there’s not a squad of Peacekeepers but a single, snow-caked figure. Madge. She holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me.

“Use these for your friend,” she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. “They’re my mother’s. She said I could take them. Use them, please.” She runs back into the storm before we can stop her.

“Crazy girl,” Haymitch mutters as we follow my mother into the kitchen.

- Catching Fire, page 115

With this new regime of Peacekeepers running District Twelve, helping Gale like this is a truly dangerous choice, further proven by Haymitch’s muttered (and possibly admiring) “Crazy girl.” Madge’s behavior (darting away as quickly as she’s come) shows that she knows exactly what she’s doing; and while she’s obviously trying not to get caught, the fact that she comes out at all shows that she thinks it’s worth the risk. She has to try. This world has changed her, and ultimately kills her. But in the meantime, she has to help and fight in whatever small ways she can.