Book 3 - The Overstory

I finished reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I kinda like it, though I'm not sure about the ending. I wrote a bit about this before. The book has tree as a running theme. It also follows the structure of a tree, starting from roots, trunk, crown, to seeds. The last time I wrote about the book I was at the roots part where it was like short stories about 9 different people and I wasn't sure if they would connect. After reading the whole thing, I think these people are like starting at different points on the roots and some of them connect on their journey up the trunk. It's like they're transported up the same vessel, but then they are dispersed out when they reach the crown. Upon reaching the seeds section, I was thinking wow this seems very hopeful because it felt to me these people are gonna be seeds that would grow into something new. It feels very optimistic because I'm not sure if my life would end up being a seed that grow into something else. I think I may be one those seeds that don't grow. So anyways, that's what I thought would happen to these people, but reading the end, I'm just not sure how to understand the ending. For many of the characters, their lives begin to go on a trajectory that define their lives when they started to see trees deeply. They spend their lives trying to save trees and if I understand what one of the characters understood in the end was that the trees don't need saving, it's the human who does. If so, it's like shifting the point of view a bit. We hear a lot about saving the environment, but human activities to harm it doesn't even slow down. If we talk about saving ourselves, will people work harder? I don't know, at the same time the book points to our choice to be ignorant.

So the ending is kinda hard to decipher for me. Times like this, it would be good to have someone who reads the same book and who I can discuss this with, but there's no one :( I'm also still clueless about trees, but the book does make me stop and look at trees more and notice them more. On my bus ride most of every day, I suddenly noticed that there's a tree who grows really straight up, its trunk is so straight up. Then there's this Frangipani / Plumeria tree who currently doesn't have any leaf at all, it's all branches. Yet one day I saw a clump of orange red flowers blooming. Reading the book makes me wonder on why the tree would do that. I don't know, to let others around it know it's alive? I know it's alive even though it's all branches. I don't know when it would grow leaf again. Reading the book really makes me wonder why trees do what they do and the book would tell you that tree do have reasons for what they do. Anyways in an odd way, that frangipani tree is kinda inspiring. It's barren right now, but it's still here and one day it will grow leaves and more flowers. Right now it's not, but it's okay, it's like it knows that there's nothing to be worried about and also in its state right, it still looks pretty interesting if you bother to look.

I wish we can have more forests. I don't know if the day would come when I have my own place, but when I do, I do hope I get to fill it with as many green living things as possible. Only around 2 months and a half left in 2019 and I'm only at book 3, I don't know if I can make it to 5 guys. Now I'm reading An Ice-Cream War, a book published in the year I was born and was nominated for the Booker Prize. It takes place in East Africa during the British and German occupations. My knowledge of that time period is totally zero. So I guess I would be learning new things. By the way, in the last post I wrote about Columbus' Egg, that happened to be the topic of my composition homework for Japanese class last week. Even in English, the last post was short and weak in content. Somehow for my homework I managed to put in 3 paragraphs using The Overstory as the starting point instead. The composition is pretty weak especially in the third paragraph. I'm sure there's a lot of grammar mistakes, but I hope my sensei kinda gets it. Though I don't even know if I convince myself.

On other news, something really sad happened last week. I can't talk about it though. So much thoughts and all are pretty sad *sigh* Anyways, in honor of the The Overstory, here's a picture of the redwood trees in Muir Woods, one of my favorite place on earth. I don't know if I will ever walk in Muir Woods again. If I do, that would be something.

:) eKa @ 8:52:00 PM •

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

back to home

archives.