ON KILLING A TREE

-GIEVEPATEL
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Gieve Patel was born in 1940 in Mumbai and was graduated in medicine.
 In addition to practicing as a doctor, he is an acclaimed poet, playwright and
artist.
 Every year he conducts a poetry writing workshop for school students in
Andra Pradesh.
 His poems deal mainly with violence and pain of humans and man’s wrong
response to nature.
 As a doctor and physician, Patel is very clinical in observing his subjects in his
writings.
 ABOUT THE POEM
 In this day and age in which we live, we are being constantly told in
increasingly emphatic terms that unless we take care of the environment in
which we live, mankind is headed towards sure disaster.
 This poem gives a close perspective about preserving the environment.
 He dramatizes man’s destruction of flora and fauna by giving a special
emphasis or focus to the plant kingdom.
 Man’s consumption of nature is growing day by day.
 Patel makes use of many images from the human body.
 His tone is cold and objective.
 SUMMARY
 Gieve Patel compares the killing of a tree with the murdering of an animal or
human being.
 He wants to show that plants too have emotions and pain jus like any other
living thing.
 It speaks of deforestation resulting to global warming leading to the Earth’s
destruction.
 Stanza 1 focuses on the long years and time a tree takes to grow consuming
the nutrients from the earth just like a baby.
 Being nourished, it has succeeded in growing out upwards and outwards
towards other sources of enrichment. It looks to the sun and draws its needs
from the sun increasing its strength and vitality.
 The poet wants to show that there is a mutual interdependence between all
aspects of nature.
 SUMMARY
 Hence as the tree grew up after so much struggle and time taking in sun, air,
water and from the atmosphere, it is not so easy to kill it with a jab or a
stroke of a knife.
 Therefore, if a man tries to kill a tree, he is trying to kill himself against the
very elements of nature.
 In this stanza, there is a beautiful poetic interpretation to the scientific
process of photosynthesis. It seems that the poet wants to contrast it with
human being who only want to take from nature and giving little or nothing
back to it.
 Gieve Patel wants to show us that if we don’t stop this madness there is going
to be a time when we have to pay for it.
 SUMMARY

 Stanzas 2 and 3 are filled with verbs of violence like hack, chop, scorch,
twist, pull, tie and snap. The poet uses these verbs to deliberately show us
the intent of humans against trees.
 There is no remorse or guilt just because these things are done to trees.
 The colour of their sap(blood) is white but the trees too experience pain
and discomfort just like any animal or human.
 Just because their life-form is different, it does not minimize its
significance.
 Stanza two describes man’s cruel efforts to kill a tree. He stabs it, chokes
it, but the tree puts on its own fight
 SUMMARY
 The tree establishes that it also has a right to life. Every time the human
do something, the tree quickly heals itself.
 The bark create itself again, every time the branches are chopped, new
twigs create itself. The struggle of the tree is real.
 It stands against the might of man to destroy it. It refuses to accept the
verdict of death as pronounced by man.
 Stanza 3 takes the act of annihilation or destruction to its ultimate end.
 Man, when recognizes that the power of tree is in the roots, he attacks it
next. The root is covered by the earth. The earth symbolizes Mother
Earth.
 SUMMARY
 The roots are kept safe from humans into deep caves of Mother Earth.
The root is the anchor of the tree.
 So the root is dug out and pulled until it becomes vulnerable to the
destructive acts of the human.
 In comparing Mother Earth and the cave/root with a woman with a baby
in her womb, the poet succeeds in passing the emotion into the reader.
Just as a mother nurtures her baby in her womb before facing the world,
the roots are nurtured by Mother Earth. There is a boundary beyond
which man cannot go.
 Man can chop the branches, man can destroy the leaves, he can take the
fruit, but as long as the roots are covered by nature, the tree is safe.
 SUMMARY
 Man uses the ultimate way to kill the tree. He pulls out the roots of the tree from
the earth just as ripping out heart from a human body as the life of the tree is
within the roots.
 The tree oozes out its white sap from the wet inner vulnerable part. Hence its
strength is exposed out.
 Here the instance can be compared to the Biblical character Samson, whose
strength was in his hair. When his hair is cut off, he loses his strength and was
defeated in the battle.
 The last part of the third stanza describes the extreme conditions to which the
roots of the tree is subjected once it is extracted from the soil.
 This represents extreme violence and torture the tree goes through just because
its blood does not resembles that of human.
 SUMMARY
 The root is scorched, dried in the sun and is deprived of all the
nourishments it gathered in itself through years.
 Then it is allowed to turn brown, hardened in the sun until it twists and
curls up completely devoid of life.
 Then the poet concludes “it is done”. This small statement shows the
triumph of human over the tree’s struggle for life. But the victory is
hollow. It is a temporary victory.
 It is the humans who are going to be the losers at the end.
 ANALYSIS
 Through the poem “On Killing A Tree”, Gieve Patel seeks to draw attention to
the very rear predicament of global warming which is the result of
uncontrollable deforestation.
 This has resulted in climatic changes, increased flooding, unseasonal rain,
droughts, rising temperatures worldwide, melting of glacier and the destruction
of natural habitats of several species.
 At present, man seems completely unconcerned about what he is doing to his
environment. Cities are expanding, forests are cleared to make way for more
home, housings, industries, more highways.
 Little is being thought of future generation. Fossil fuels are being consumed with
no thought to the future. All this careless acts will reflect back negatively in the
future of our planet.
 ADDITIONAL POINTS
 Around hundred trees are required to be chopped to produce 50000 pages
of paper.
 In view of all these facts, the poem is a significant wake up call to every
citizen of the 21st century.
THANK YOU