Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Overstory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Humans and Trees
Time
Destruction, Extinction, and Rebirth
Human Nature, Psychology, and Storytelling
Complexity, Branching, and Interdependence
Consciousness, Value, and Meaning
Summary
Analysis
In a city park, an unnamed woman sits leaning against a pine tree. “Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies,” and she can hear the pine tree speaking to her. The tree speaks in ambiguous phrases, saying that “sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering,” and that “a thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.” The woman continues listening and hears signals from all the other trees around her in the park.
This mysterious opening passage introduces The Overstory’s use of fantastical elements, as the unnamed woman receives messages from the trees around her. The phrases she hears send the message that non-sentient elements of nature (like the sun or water) are “worth answering,” and that one can have a wide variety of experiences by “holding still,” like a tree does. In other words, the trees let the woman know that nature is worth paying attention to, and that people can learn from trees if they’re willing to slow down and see things from a different perspective. These statements immediately introduce the idea that trees have intelligence and purpose of their own, and they also have their own sense of time.
Themes
More and more trees join the chorus, even from very far away. Together they tell the woman that humans don’t perceive trees in the right way. While humans only perceive what is above the ground, “there’s always as much belowground as above.” Finally, the trees say, “If your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.” Then the pine tree tells her to just “listen.”
This passage suggests that humanity’s perception of trees (and all other life forms besides our own) is flawed and incomplete, as we limit our ideas of intelligence and consciousness. Further, it implies that there is another type of “meaning” beyond human consciousness, one that requires the mind to become a “greener thing”—that is, more like a tree—in order to comprehend it.
Themes
