The Hunger Games book franchise is full of heartbreaking events, but there were a few moments between the pages that inspired real tears among readers. By their very nature, the stories within Suzanne Collins’ books are tragic, revolving around a dystopian future in which a government uses the deaths of children to control the population. During every Hunger Games event, 23 kids between the ages of 12 and 17 are brutally murdered for entertainment. Still, some of these deaths, and the way characters handled them, hit differently than others.

There were countless tragic events within the initial three Hunger Games books, which included The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. Katniss was forced to participate in two separate Games, all before entering a real civil war in the final installment. To raise the death toll even higher, Collins’ released her Hunger Games prequel novel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which covered the 10th Hunger Games and a young President Snow’s first few murders. In all, this makes four books full of heartbreaking content that repeatedly brings on the waterworks.

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Sejanus Crying For His Mother During His Execution

The Jabberjays Turned This Into A Haunting Scene

The Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, was set 64 years before the events of Katniss’ first games and introduced the people in young Coriolanus Snow’s life who helped shape him into the dictator he would become. One such person was Sejanus Plinth, a kindly boy from District 2 who wound up a Capitol citizen after the first Rebellion. While Snow wasn’t initially fond of Sejanus, he reluctantly came to care for the boy in his own way. However, this didn’t stop Snow from reporting Sejanus’ crimes back to the Capitol.

Snow hadn’t thought that Sejanus would be executed, and this event sent the young future president spinning down an even darker path. The boy’s death was already bad enough, but the fact that he screamed out “Ma!” just before being hanged made the scene extra devastating. Snow’s shock and the repeated screeching of “Ma!…Ma!…Ma!…” from the Jabberjays all contributed to an overall haunting scene.

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Katniss Singing To Rue As She Died

Katniss Rediscovered The Power Of Song

Katniss had grown up watching the Hunger Games, and while she hated them and knew they were terrible, she was somewhat desensitized to them. This meant that as she entered the arena, Katniss didn’t get too caught up in the individual deaths of her fellow tributes. All she cared about was her survival, so she didn’t allow herself to get emotional at the tragedy of it all. However, this changed when she allied herself with little Rue, who was too much like Prim for Katniss to maintain her stoic mask.

This meant that when Rue died, Katniss was entirely unable to keep it together. It’s the first moment in the Hunger Games books that the Girl on Fire cracked, and her grief as she sang the little girl to “sleep” was almost too much to endure. The added context that Katniss had once loved to sing made the moment even more tragic since she had previously determined that music had no practical purpose. However, at that moment, Katniss learned that songs could bring comfort—and they could also make war.

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Katniss’ Speech About Rue & Thresh On The Victory Tour

Katniss’ Victory Tour Opened Up All Those Old Wounds

Katniss did her best to shut out her feelings about Rue’s death after winning the Hunger Games, which is why she dreaded the Victory Tour. It would place her in front of the little girl’s surviving family, and she knew that facing them would bring back all the emotions she had been fighting off since the Games. This ultimately led Katniss to ask Peeta to do all the talking, and she planned only to deliver the lines Effie had written for her instead. However, she quickly saw that her lack of emotion enraged Rue’s little sister, and Katniss couldn’t leave things like that.

Katniss wound up giving a sort of eulogy, knowing that this was what Rue and her district partner, Thresh, truly deserved. It was a touching speech about the gentle beauty that Rue had brought into Katniss’s life. The part that got the tears flowing, however, was when Katniss said all the beautiful things in her life, like her sister Prim and the flowers in the meadow, that served as a daily reminder of Rue’s tragic end.

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Cinna’s Being Dragged Off Before The Second Quarter Quell

Cinna’s Death Was Quick But Terrible

Cinna was an easy favorite character in The Hunger Games. He was the least clueless of the Capitol citizens, and it was clear that he genuinely cared about Katniss and wanted to use his skills as a stylist to give her her best chance of survival. Of course, Cinna’s role went much further than this in Catching Fire. He was no longer just a stylist but a rebel, and it was this that ultimately led to the man’s tragic death.

Cinna turned Katniss’ wedding dress, which President Snow intended as her shroud, into the rebellious form of a flaming Mockingjay, and this was enough to secure his death. Cinna knew precisely what he was doing, but it didn’t make his ending any less horrible to read about. Snow waited until the moments just before Katniss was raised into the arena for the Second Quarter Quell to have Cinna beaten and dragged away. Readers didn’t have much time to mourn him because of the start of the games, but there was a long enough beat to shed a tear.

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Peeta Comforting The Morphling As She Died

Peeta Was So Compassionate For A Woman He Didn’t Know

Going into the Second Quarter Quell, Katniss was determined not to get as emotionally involved with the tributes as she had with Rue in The Hunger Games. So, this time around, it was Peeta who had a touching moment with a tribute as they died. He didn’t know her name and had hardly even talked to the woman, but when she sacrificed her life to save him, he knew he owed it to her to bring her comfort in those final moments.

The tribute from District 6 was a morphling, so addicted to the painkiller that she stood little chance of winning the 75th Hunger Games. The unnamed woman was an artist like Peeta, and it was this fact that the boy used to bring the morphling peace. He talked of his experience painting, describing the colors that go into something so simple as painting white fur. As he did this, the woman used her blood to paint a flower on Peeta’s cheek, which he graciously thanked her for before she died in his arms.

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Katniss Suffering From Survivor’s Guilt In District 13

Katniss’ Mental Torment In District 13 Was Almost Unbearable

Katniss wasn’t doing well when Mockingjay picked up on her time in District 13. The devastating attack on District 12 resulted in the deaths of the vast majority of its people, and this pain was only compounded by Peeta being captured by the Capitol following the escape from the Quarter Quell arena. It took everything in Katniss to keep herself as sane as possible, but her inner monologue revealed frequent panic attacks resulting from her survivor’s guilt.

Since the Hunger Games trilogy is written in the first-person present point of view, readers have an intimate understanding of Katniss’s thoughts and feelings. Collins did a remarkable job of putting Katniss’ panic on the page, exploring how she would be triggered into an attack while trying desperately to pull herself out of it. While powerful, it was a pretty painful read, enough for those who could empathize with Katniss’ pain to suffer right along with her.

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Peeta’s Cruelty Toward Katniss After Being Hijacked

It Was Almost As If The Real Peeta Had Died

Peeta was all gentleness and compassion throughout the first two Hunger Games books. Katniss could count on this—no matter how confused or hurt she was, Peeta was there to treat her with love and kindness. Of course, this was in stark contrast to the way he treated her in District 13 after he had been Hijacked. He immediately attempted to murder her, which was already pretty devastating. However, this wasn’t even the worst of it.

Even more heartbreaking than Peeta’s attempted murder of Katniss was his general attitude toward her. Peeta’s kindness had become the emotional foundation for not just Katniss but also readers. Reading Katniss’ inner dialogue as she coped with the boy with the bread hating her was tragic since it was basically the last of her sanity. Seeing it all fall apart was certainly enough to bring on some tears.

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Finnick’s Sudden Death In Mockingjay

Finnick Was So Close To Happiness

Finnick was among the rare characters in The Hunger Games books to have gotten something like a happy ending when he married Annie. The boy had been Snow’s slave for years, and the president’s tendency to sell Finnick’s body to the highest bidder made it impossible for him to be with the woman he loved. However, his escape from the Quarter Quell arena and Annie’s rescue from the Capitol meant the pair could finally be together. Unfortuantely, it didn’t last long.

After everything he had gone through, it’s no surprise that Finnick wanted to fight in the Capitol. Still, it was simply too sad that he had to die, and in such a brutal way, too. Snow’s muttations, specifically designed to torment Katniss, had begun to tear Finnick to pieces, and Katniss was forced to end his suffering using the Holo’s self-destruct function. As with many deaths in Hunger Games, there was almost no time to process it before the action continued, forcing readers to put the book down for a moment to mourn.

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Katniss’ Drug-Addled Greif After Prim’s Death

Katniss’ Numbness Made The Moment Even More Horrible

Since Katniss was injured in the explosion at the Capitol Square as well, her inner dialogue became immediately confusing after she caught a glimpse of her sister. After a couple of paragraphs, it becomes clear that Katniss has been pumped full of Morphling, which made the way she processed what happened to her twisted and strange. It isn’t until after she saw visions of her dead loved ones that it was fully confirmed that Primrose had died.

Katniss’ confused, drug-addled processing of Prim’s death in The Hunger Games made the moment even heavier than it would have been otherwise. Even once she was more in control over her mind, Katniss’ grief presented itself with terrible bluntness as she considered how she had watched her beloved sister become a human torch. Katniss may have been numbed from the whole experience, but readers we in desperate, hysterical shock.

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Katniss Finding Prim’s Cat At Their Home In District 12

Katniss’ Grief Was Fully Realized When She Saw Buttercup

Though she mourned, Katniss wasn’t able to fully connect with the grief she felt over her sister’s death until she returned to District 12. Her emotions came to a head in what was likely the most heart-shattering moment in the entire Hunger Games book franchise—when she found Prim’s cat, Buttercup, at their home in Victor’s Village. The cat had been left at District 13, but when Prim didn’t return, he had traveled all the way home looking for her. Of course, he would never see his gentle owner again.

Katniss went through a range of emotions when she saw Buttercup. At first, she felt rage. She was mad at the cat for still having hope that Primrose was alive and screamed at him that Prim was gone and would never come back. She threw things at him, but when that did nothing to scare him off, she held Buttercup close, and they both wailed together. Katniss had hated Buttercup, but she needed his sadness to fully experience her own grief. It’s a Hunger Games scene that will never fail to inspire a wave of tears.