The Trees

Summary

The Tree is a short symbolic poem and it focuses on the movement of trees that are initially indoors but seeking to escape to freedom in the forest. The trees represent the nature and womanhood in particular. It is written by Adrienne Rich. Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore USA. She was a famous poet, essayist, and feminist.

This poem presents a conflict between men and nature. The poetess suggests here that the trees and plants used in the interior decoration in cities are as imprisoned. They need freedom. These trees want to move out to the forest where trees decreasing day by day due to cutting. The poetess says that everything has a deep desire for freedom. It is necessary for growth and wellbeing. We must follow the nature of laws.

This poem is a voice with a body engaged in the activities and sensing intrusion which are not organic to the conventions of a native poem. This poem is demonstrating the unsuitability of language itself as a greenhouse or container of nature. She knows that once the trees move to the forest area, the house will have complete silence.

In this poem, “I” is the voice of the speaker of the poem Adrienne Rich.  Poem The Trees is the voice with a body engaged in the activities and sensing intrusions that are not organic to the conventions of a nature poem.  This is actually an unnatural poem that narrates the struggle of a population of trees to escape the confined surrounding of a greenhouse.  Through the trees, this poem demonstrates the unsuitability of the language itself as a greenhouse. The poetess is the witness for the trees exodus but making distances herself from participating in the making of something out of the spectacle. She can sit and write too.

Even though the speaker addresses the audience, her own head is full of whispers and she is an audience as well.  We, however, the audience to the poem, are compelled with the command. The speaker reaches across the barrier between the poem and the audience. A transaction that occurs on the page, and says for listening.

Poetess articulates her consciousness of the many levels of inner and outer and the blurring of the boundaries between them.  In the poem, the trees are in the house of the poet. Their roots work all night to disengage themselves from the cracks of the floor in the veranda. The leaves are making efforts to move towards the glass.  An open door is for the night and the whole moon and the sky is available to the speaker. This tree is at the same time, through this door the smell of leaves still reaches back in.  The speaker’s head is another interior and implicitly entered by the whispers.

The poetess is especially intrigued by the image of the trees similar to newly discharged patients. The poet is making a comparison to the long-cramped branches which are shuffling under the roof with the newly discharged patients from the hospital. As they are moving towards the hospital doors after their long illnesses. The branches have cramped under the gaps with the roof. Therefore they want to get out into the open to spread themselves in the fresh air.

Answers to textual questions:

1. (i) Find, in the first stanza, three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest.

Ans: The three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest according to Adrienne Rich are – the sitting of a bird on trees, the hiding of insects, and the sun burying its feet in the shadow of the forest.

 (ii) What picture do these words create in your mind: “….. sun bury its feet in shadow…..1′? What could the poet mean by the sun’s ‘feet’?

Ans: The sun’s ‘feet’ refers to the rays of the sun that fall on the earth. When there is no shadow on the ground, because there are no trees, the rays fall directly on the ground. In a forest with trees, the shadow hides the sun's rays as if the sun is burying its feet in the shadow that falls from the trees.

 2. (i) Where are the trees in the poem? What do their roots, their leaves, and their twigs do?

Ans. In the poem, the trees are trapped in the poet’s house. Their roots work all night to disengage themselves from the cracks in the veranda floor. The leaves try very hard to move towards the glass and put a lot of pressure on it so that it breaks, while the small twigs get stiff with strain.

(ii) What does the poet compare their branches to?

Ans. The poet compares the branches to newly discharged patients of a hospital. The large branches of the trees become cramped due to the roof above them, and when they get free they rush stumbling to the outside world. While doing so, they look half-shocked like the patients, who wait for a long time to get out of the hospital.

 3. (i) How does the poet describe the moon:

(a) at the beginning of the third stanza, and

(b) at its end? What causes this change?

Ans. (a) At the beginning of the third stanza, the poet says that the full moon is shining in the open sky in the fresh night.

(b)At the end of the stanza, she describes that the moon breaks into pieces like a broken mirror and shines on the heads of the tallest oak trees. As the trees move outside, they cover some of the shine of the moon and it can be seen only in parts. So it seems that the moon has broken into pieces.

 2. What happens to the house when the trees move out of it?

Ans. When the trees move out of the house, the glasses break and the whispers of the trees vanish, leaving the house silent.

 3. Why do you think the poet does not mention “the departure of the forest from the house” in her letters? (Could it be that we are often silent about important happenings that are so unexpected that they embarrass us? Think about this again when you answer the next set of questions.)

Ans: The poet hardly mentions about “the departure of the forest from the house” in her letters because it is humans, who did not care for nature in the first place. So, maybe, the poet now thinks that nobody would be interested in knowing about the efforts that the trees are making in order to set themselves free. If other men cared about the trees, they would not have destroyed them. It seems that this whole beauty of trees moving back to forests can be seen and felt only by the poet.

 4. Now that you have read the poem in detail, we can begin to ask what the poem might mean. Here are two suggestions. Can you think of others?

 1. Does the poem present a conflict between man and nature? Compare it with A Tiger in the Zoo. Is the poet suggesting that plants and trees, used for ‘interior decoration’ in cities while forests are cut down, are ‘imprisoned1, and need to ‘break out’?

2. On the other hand, Adrienne Rich has been known to use trees as a metaphor for human beings: this is a recurrent image in her poetry. What new meanings emerge from the poem if you take its trees to be symbolic of this particular meaning?

  Ans: Since a poem can have different meanings for different readers and the poet can mean two different things using the same imagery, both these meanings can be justified in the context of the poem:

 1. Yes, the poem presents a conflict between man and nature. Man has always caused much harm to nature, without realizing that it actually is harm to the human race. Humans cut down forests for forest goods, which has destroyed a lot of natural beauty. By keeping trees inside walls and denying them their natural home, they are denying them their freedom. So, the trees want to move out. Similarly, in the poem A Tiger in the Zoo, the poet shows that animals feel bound by cages and they want to get free and run wild in the open.

 2. If trees have been used as a metaphor for human beings, then the poem would mean that like the trees, humans too want to break free of the boundaries that life puts on them. Modern life with all kinds of physical comfort has also brought a lot of moral downfalls. Our lives have become busy and we have become selfish and greedy. Man would also want to enjoy the beauty of nature and go out in the open and be free, just like trees.