Class 10 Chapter 7 Poem The Trees

NCERT Solutions for Class 10 English Chapter 7 Poem The Trees

Question 1. (i) Find, in the first stanza, three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest. (ii) What picture do these words create in your mind: “… sun bury its feet in shadow…”? What could the poet mean by the sun’s ‘feet’?

Answer (i) The three things that cannot happen in a treeless forest are – the sitting of a bird on trees, the hiding of insects and the sun burying its feet in the shadow of the forest.

(ii) The sun’s ‘feet’ refers to the hot, glowing Sun whose rays fall on the earth. In a forest with trees, the shadow hides the sun rays and it seems that the sun is burying its feet in the shadow that fall from the trees.

Question 2. (i) Where are the trees in the poem? What do their roots, their leaves, and their twigs do?

(ii) What does the poet compare their branches to?

Answer (i) In the poem, the trees are in the poet’s house. Their roots work all night to break up themselves from the cracks in the veranda floor. The leaves try very hard to move towards the glass and put a lot of pressure on it so that it breaks, while the small twigs get stiff.

(ii) The poet compares the branches to a newly discharged patients of a hospital who look half dazed as they move towards the hospital door after a long period of illness and wants to get out of the hospital as soon as possible. The large branches of the trees become cramped due to the roof above them, and when they get free they rush stumblingly to the outside world.

Question 3. (i) How does the poet describe the moon:

(a) at the beginning of the third stanza, and

(b) at its end? What causes this change?

(ii) What happens to the house when the trees move out of it?

(iii) Why do you think the poet does not mention “the departure of the forest from the house” in her letters? (Could it be that we are often silent about important happenings that are so unexpected that they embarrass us? Think about this again when you answer the next set of questions.)

Answer (i) At the beginning of the third stanza, the poet says that the full moon is shining in the open sky in the fresh night. However , at the end of the stanza, she describes that the moon breaks into pieces like a broken mirror. This change is caused by the trees that have made their way from her to outside .As the trees move outside, they cover some of the shine of the moon and it can be seen only in parts. This is why, it seems that the moon has broken into pieces.

(ii) When the trees move out of the house, the glasses break and the whispers of the trees vanish, leaving the house silent.

(iii) The poet does not mention about “the departure of the forest from the house” in her letters because it is humans, who did not care for nature in the first place. So, maybe, the poet now thinks that nobody would be interested in knowing about the efforts that the trees are making in order to set themselves free. If other men cared about the trees, they would not have destroyed them. It seems that this whole beauty of trees moving back to forests can be seen and felt only by the poet.

Question 4. Now that you have read the poem in detail, we can begin to ask what the poem might mean. Here are two suggestions. Can you think of others?

(i) Does the poem present a conflict between man and nature? Compare it with A Tiger in the Zoo. Is the poet suggesting that plants and trees, used for ‘interior decoration’ in cities while forests are cut down, are ‘imprisoned’, and need to ‘break out’?

(ii) On the other hand, Adrienne Rich has been known to use trees as a metaphor for human beings; this is a recurrent image in her poetry. What new meanings emerge from the poem if you take its trees to be symbolic of this particular meaning?

Answer (i) Yes, the poem presents a conflict between man and nature. Nature is free and unbounded whereas man prefer to live in bounded space. Man has always caused much harm to nature, without realising that it actually is a harm to the humans only. He uses plants for interior decoration and for that he cut down trees, which has destroyed a lot of natural beauty. Similarly, in the poem A Tiger in the Zoo, the poet shows that animals feel bounded by cages and they want to get free and run wild in the open. He kills animals for food or other purpose and cages them in zoo. The poet feels that trees and animals are protesting against humans to set them free and work out in open.

(ii) If trees have been used as a metaphor for human beings, then the poem would mean that like the trees, humans too want to break from the restriction of busy life. They also wanted to be free from the boundaries that life has put on them. They also wanted to go out in the nature. They work all day and night to achieve something but they do not enjoy in doing their work. They feel cramped under the roof of their houses and offices. Man would also want to enjoy the beauty of nature and go out in the open and be free, just like trees.