What The Three Finger Salute Really Means In The Hunger Games

In the book, Katniss explains the gesture when she first sees the crowd using it to salute her at the Reaping. "At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me," author Collins writes. "It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love."

Over the course of the series, though, the three-finger salute also — and perhaps inevitably — began to have a larger meaning. In the second movie, "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire," the gesture is used after Katniss makes a speech remembering Rue. "I couldn't save her," she says, prompting an older man in the audience to whistle the notes of Rue's song and then use the three-finger salute. The crowd follows suit, but enforcers make their way into the crowd and execute the man with a shot to the head. Clearly, the salute at this point is being seen as a sign of resistance, of rebellion against the capital, and of support for justice. The use of it results in immediate, irrevocable punishment, which shows how dangerous the powers-that-be find it.