Hunger Games Fans Can't Help But Feel Bad For Mrs. Everdeen
Nobody in "The Hunger Games" exactly gets off easy. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), the series protagonist, is forced to fight in the deadly Hunger Games not once, but twice, as is her love interest and fellow tribute Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). Katniss's best friend Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) is responsible for keeping his entire family fed and safe. Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), Katniss and Peeta's mentor, is an alcoholic struggling with serious PTSD. All that said, some fans think that we're overlooking one of the series' most tragic characters.
That would be Mrs. Everdeen, played by Paula Malcolmson in all four of the "Hunger Games" films. This makes sense. In the first movie, she watches as her younger daughter Prim (Willow Shields) gets chosen as the tribute for District 12 — only for her older daughter Katniss to volunteer instead. In the second, "Catching Fire," she stands by helpless as Katniss goes to the Games again, and throughout both "Mockingjay" movies, she works as a healer in the war-torn District 13. Then Prim dies. Oh, and before all this, her husband died too, and she sank into a deep depression, which she struggles with throughout both the books and movies.
That's a lot for one person to shoulder, and fans on Reddit agree. In a thread titled "In defense of Mrs. Everdeen," u/Bubbly_Welcome8629 posted a lengthy screed explaining just why Mrs. Everdeen has it so hard and other fans joined in.
Mrs. Everdeen has to overcome a truly awful number of hurdles in The Hunger Games
In a reply, u/leporelli agreed, "She suffered from depression, heavily. It's said in the books that she later treats people with depression (the word isn't used, more so hinted at) and I think she says if she had known or if she had enough money she might've been able to help herself back when things got bad after her husband died."
Some fans, though, were frustrated that, at the series' end, Mrs. Everdeen abandons her home of District 12 and leaves Katniss for good. Pointing out that she leaves an extremely traumatized and depressed daughter by herself after the war ends, u/Forsch416 wrote, "It is so neglectful and weird to me that I'm not sure why the author made this choice [...] In the end, she'll never have a close relationship with her daughter or grandchildren, which makes me sad too."
There are, certainly, a lot of ways to look at Mrs. Everdeen's behavior. Though she's basically a background character throughout the series, she deals with such intense grief and endures some of the worst ordeals a person can possibly face. There should be some sympathy for Mrs. Everdeen, and clearly, "Hunger Games" fans understand that.