The presence and the actions of Forest—the increasingly dark and malevolent forest surrounding Village—initially suggests that Matty's journey through Forest can be read as a simple conflict of man versus nature. However, as Matty lies dying in Forest and receives Leader's message to use his gift of healing, he discovers that Forest isn't simply bloodthirsty for no reason or for its own selfish reasons. Instead, the dangers posed by Forest to humans are exactly those that the humans in Village pose to themselves. With this, Lowry positions the natural world of the novel as a mirror for the darkest parts of human nature itself.
The residents of Village have a long and fraught history with Forest. Forest is known for "warning" (creating a minor injury) and then "entangling" (strangling, poisoning, stabbing, and ultimately killing people with vegetation) those it no longer wants to travel through it. By turning Forest and the natural world more broadly into a sentient being that's fundamentally violent, Lowry crafts a world where people appear to be rightfully terrified of an entity that seems unknowable and impossible to appease. Notably, with this understanding, characters believe that Forest is something separate and different from themselves, rather than a reflection of them and their society. In other words, the same fear, selfishness, and cruelty that grows in Village is somehow magically manifested in Forest, and people's fear of Forest keeps them from recognizing or accepting their own connection to these changes. The fact that this connection isn't immediately obvious to the characters in the novel speaks to the way that their fear of change and difference is extremely isolating. This in turn mirrors the way that the villagers begin to speak about outsiders with fear and scorn. While once, all people in Village saw refugees as important and valuable to their society, in the novel's present, the villagers' selfishness leads them to see refugees (who, Matty notes, are no different now than they were in the past) as dangerous and unwanted.
Matty begins to suspect that the human world of Village and the natural world of Forest are connected when he first embarks on his journey to fetch Kira from her village so she can return with him to live with her father, Seer. When Matty leaves, Ramon and his little sister have been quarantined by Herbalist for fear that whatever ails them will infect others in Village, while Mentor and his group have begun gathering logs to build a wall around Village. At this point, Matty believes that the "thickening" happening in Forest is something separate and distinct from what's going on in Village. What Matty sees, however, is that Forest is suffering just like his friend and his neighbors. In addition to becoming increasingly violent and dangerous, Forest begins to smell of rot and decay—changes that mirror Mentor's shift to become suspicious of outsiders, as well as Ramon's physical illness.
Though it takes Matty until the end of the novel and the end of his life to realize it, this suggests that Forest isn't actually the one at fault here—it's the humans, as they don't understand that their actions and beliefs have consequences in the wider world beyond Village. Treating Forest (and, for that matter, other people) with respect and reverence, as Matty does, is the only way to safely and effectively exist in the world—though, as Matty and Kira grow sicker and acquire more injuries on their journey back, the novel suggests that there are times when even this isn't enough.
The fact that Matty can heal Forest (rather than simply changing people's thinking or striking down the vote to ban outsiders, for example) and, by extension, Village, reinforces the novel's assertion that the prejudice and selfishness that plague people like Mentor is an illness like any other, though one that only becomes obvious to Matty when he learns to see Forest as "a tangled knot of fears and deceits and dark struggles for power that had disguised itself and almost destroyed everything." Essentially, the issue isn't Forest; it's the "illness" that infects Village and, through the mysterious connection between Forest and Village, infects Forest in just the same way. With this, the novel suggests that kindness as well as cruelty aren't issues that affect just humans or indeed, just the group of people who feel a certain way—one's thoughts, beliefs, and actions have far-reaching consequences in the world, and should be developed with caution.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Humans and Nature ThemeTracker
Humans and Nature Quotes in Messenger
"Were you scared of Forest?" Matty asked him. So many people were, and with good reason.
"No. It's all an illusion."
Matty frowned. He didn't know what the blind man meant. Was he saying that fear was an illusion? Or that Forest was? [...] Maybe, Matty thought, everything was an illusion to a man who had lost his eyes.
Others from Village rarely ventured into Forest. It was dangerous for them. Sometimes Forest closed in and entangled people who had tried to travel beyond. There had been terrible deaths, with bodies brought out strangled by vines or branches that had reached out malevolently around the throats and limbs of those who decided to leave Village. Somehow Forest knew. Somehow, too, it knew that Matty's travels were benign and necessary. The vines had never reached out for him. The trees seemed, sometimes, almost to part and usher him through.
Some of those who had been among the most industrious, the kindest, the most stalwart citizens of Village now went to the platform and shouted out their wish that the border be closed so that "we" (Matty shuddered at the use of "we") would not have to share the resources anymore.
We need all the fish for ourselves.
Our school is not big enough to teach their children, too; only our own.
They can't even speak right. We can't understand them.
They have too many needs. We don't want to take care of them.
And finally: We've done it long enough.
Matty glanced over and saw that she was standing in front of the tapestry Kira had made for her father. Even from where he stood, he could see what Jean meant. The entire forest area, the hundreds of tiny stitches in shades of green, had darkened, and the threads had knotted and twisted in odd ways. The peaceful scene had changed into something no longer beautiful. It had an ominous feel to it, a feel of impenetrability.
But on this journey, something was different. For the first time, Matty felt hostility from Forest. The fish were slow to come to his hook. A chipmunk, usually an amiable companion, chittered angrily and bit his finger when he held his hand toward it. Many red berries, of a kind he had always eaten, had black spots on them and tasted bitter; and for the first time he noticed poison ivy growing across the path again and again, where it had never grown before.
When the sinister, curling stem—in appearance not unlike the pea vines that grew in early summer in their garden—reached his ankle, it began to curl tightly around his flesh. Quickly he reached down and severed it with the small blade. Within seconds it turned brown and fell away from him, lifeless.
But there seemed no victory to it. Only a pause in a battle he was bound to lose.
Stumbling and bleeding, he wished briefly that he had brought some kind of weapon. But what would have protected him against Forest itself? It was a force too huge to fight with a knife or a club.
He saw Forest and understood what Seer had meant. It was an illusion. It was a tangled knot of fears and deceits and dark struggles for power that had disguised itself and almost destroyed everything. Now it was unfolding, like a flower coming into bloom, radiant with possibility.
