Contents

The Trees Are Down

Central Situation: deforestation (cutting down of tress)

  • the poem is ecological elegy lamenting on the loss of nature due to deforestation
  • tone: serious
  • mood: very sad, depressing
  • form of poetry: elegy (that deals with nature)
  • urbanization is the cause of deforestation
  • the poem is an emotional outpouring at the destruction of the “great plan-trees at the end of the garden”
  • the poet makes the death of the trees into a religious wounding through the epigraph
  • the poem is emotive and personal as a specific event is described and there is an anecdote shown through the rat

Structure and form

  • 4 stanzas
  • epigraph at the start (in italics)
  • varied sentence length - the varied sentence length shows her pain and emotion
  • the poet expresses her pain through the unstructured stanzas and sentences
  • circular structure - begins and ends with emotive words from the Bible

Voice and tone

  • the persona laments the loss of the trees and shows a depth of sensitivity as the men have their “loud common laughs” and their “Whoops” and “Whoas” - which the narrator feels are scornful and mocking
  • the men “were above it all” suggesting man’s dominance over nature
  • the narrator feels cut off from the natural world as the trees are gone - “Half the spring, for me, will have gone with them”

Language

  • “Down” is a euphemism for the destructive work of the laborers
  • the first stanza is full of auditory imagery and the onomatopoeia (“swish”, “rustle”, “crash”) creates a vivid impression of the trees which stands in contrast the “loud common laughs”
  • there is also juxtaposition in the words “great” and that the saw will “grate”, which creates a striking effect of what will happen to the trees

Epigraph

  • underlines the persona’s faith in religion
  • it summarizes the central idea of deforestation
  • the central situation is described by this allusion and reference to the bible

Stanza 1
Lines 1-3

  • the poet reports what happens, the poem is conversational
  • element of shock - the persona is shocked at what she sees, she laments for the trees being cut down
  • tone of lamentation
  • through the use of the homophones/interplay of words, Mew shows the agony of the “great” trees as they get grated - it goes from “great” to “grate,” showing a sudden shift in the tone

Lines 2-4

  • she lists the sounds she hears - this creates auditory imagery, but she also describes what she sees, creating visual imagery - this creates synesthesia

Lines 5-6

  • she does not like how the men are happy about cutting the trees
  • she feels that the trees are at mercy of the men
  • she is surprised that the men are completely unaffected and unmoved by what they are doing
  • repetition through alliteration (“common”)

In short, this stanza catalogues her pain and brings out her horror

Stanza 2
Lines 1-5

  • tone of nostalgia
  • she felt that the rat had the right to live, like her siblings who also died
  • she feels that rat should have lived, even though it was insignificant; the rat was supposed to live in spring but it could not because the trees were cut down (shows destruction of nature) - this shows how one action can have lasting effects
  • this brings out her desolation and loss

Lines 6-14

  • only one “bough” (tree trunk) - the tree is lonely as all others have been chopped down
  • “grey” is a colour of uncertainty and mourning
  • the tree is personified - it is lonely
  • because the trees are cut, the rat has no place to live - this shows the interdependence between trees and nature
  • the untimely death of nature creates pain
  • the untimely death is similar to how the persona lost her siblings
  • the death of the tree is a metaphor to her own life as she lost her siblings
  • this creates a subjective connect to her life; she feels close to the rat, she calls it “him,” and compares it to her siblings
  • “rain” brings out the pain and loss of the situation

In this stanza, her pain brings out the loss

Stanza 3
Lines 1-2

  • when trees are cut, the cycle of life is curbed
  • in “Spring,” there is supposed to be life, but there is not because all the trees have been chopped down

Lines 3-5

  • these lines depict how unmerciful humans can be
  • the place has been cleared of the “whispering loveliness” (auditory imagery - sound the trees make as they sway)
  • the poet says they can whisper to show that she is able to connect with the trees ???
  • (5) the pleasure of existence has been taken away (“Half the Spring, for me, will have gone with them”)

This stanza shows how the happiness of life is taken away as they trees have been cut doen

Stanza 4
Lines 1-6

  • she feels she is emotionally involved with the trees, she finds herself synonymously with trees
  • she says that nature pays the price of humans
  • (3) “Half [her] life” is dead
  • with the trees alive, there was sun and rain, but now humans have destroyed them

Lines 7-11

  • “rain” brings out pain
  • when there are no trees, there are no birds (birds symbolic to life)
  • (10-11) elevates poem to the spiritual level
  • in the progress of deforestation, man cuts himself from nature
  • end of the poem goes back to the beginning - shows how process of deforestation continues ???