Greenwood

“Though she understands this journal is something that ought to have great bearing on her life, unfortunately for Silas and his scheme, Jake has always mistrusted the expression ‘knowing your roots.’ As though roots by their very definition are knowable. Any dendrologist can tell you that the roots of a mature Douglas fir forest spread for miles. That they’re dark and intertwining, tangled and twisted, and impossible to map. That they often fuse together, and even communicate, secretly sharing nutrients and chemical weapons among themselves. So the truth is that there exists no clear distinction between one tree and another. And their roots are anything but knowable.”

In this passage, Christie uses the idiom “know your roots” as an extended metaphor for Jake’s rejection of her family heritage. Because Jake’s affinity to the environment is so strong, she rejects her identity as a Greenwood on the basis of science. This rejection characterizes her as someone who relies on greater objective truths to deny her responsibility to acknowledge personal ones.

“Though she talks constantly of Liam’s bright future and worries aloud about whether there’ll be any unspoiled woodland left for him to enjoy as an adult, he counts weeks between the times that she actually focuses her green eyes on his face or listens to what he says. For this reason, every Halloween (a holiday she actually observes, dragging him to the same party at the Earth Now! Collective house in Vancouver each year) Liam has dressed up as a tree—a Douglas fir, in fact, her favourite species, wrapping himself in grey cardboard bark and branches, adorning himself with pinecones carved from her wine corks and with construction-paper needles that he’s painstakingly cut out himself. He wears the costume in the hopes that his mother will finally see him. It’s never worked.

And so that year, Liam decides to start dressing up as a lumberjack.”

This passage not only cements the tension between Liam and Willow Greenwood but also exposes Liam’s motivations for rebelling against his mother. As a young nomad, Liam can’t help but feel that Willow values her commitment to saving the environment over his upbringing. His lumberjack costume is symbolic of his direct opposition to her priorities, suggesting that he only rebels against her because he wants her to love him more than the trees.

“And during hard times, people crave the consolations of other hard times, whether those of the past or of an imagined ruined future, to ease the pains of the present they’re stuck with.”

This passage functions as a meta-commentary for the novel’s historical scope. Christie addresses contemporary worries about the state of the environment by relating current anxieties to past and future ones. Jake’s anxiety over the Great Withering resonates with Temple’s anxiety over the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Later, Jake allays the anxiety over her financial obligations by reading the diary of Euphemia Baxter, who lived during the Great Depression.

“Why is it that the rich always want to buy back the few things they’ve allowed the poor to have? Is it to remind them that nothing is theirs, not truly?”

In this passage, Meena delivers an indictment of capitalism’s role in the destruction of the natural world. In a capitalist society, everything is privatized, including natural common spaces like the forests, reflected in Harris’s decision to burn Greenwood Island down while he still holds its leasing rights. Meena’s words argue that in this type of society, the world only belongs to the privileged few, robbing the rest of the world of any access to the same resources.

“‘You’re a good person, Liam. One of the best. But you’re just one person,’ she says, sucking pulp from her teeth and spitting it into the sand. ‘Nature is greater than us all.’”

Willow discusses her moral philosophy in this passage, which always views the needs of the collective as being greater than the needs of the individual. Though Liam takes this as a sign of her preference, his maturity is marked by the acknowledgment that people must privilege the needs of others for the world to survive.

“And after he finishes sanding the joins and is applying the last coat of precisely concocted varnish with a sable fur brush, he’s struck by the realization that perhaps his mother had been right: maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins—we love them because they sound like us.”

Here, Liam reflects on Humanity’s Interdependent Relationship with the Environment. This passage represents a turning point in Liam’s relationship with his mother. He only manages to reconcile their differing views of nature once he dedicates his skills as a woodworker to creating something for Meena.

“Time goes in cycles. Everything comes back again, eventually.”

Harris foreshadows the way each of the characters’ narratives will resonate with each other, hinting at the theme of The True Value of Family Legacies. For instance, though Willow rejects Harris’s assertion by claiming that what he destroys can’t be reclaimed, she learns that her resentment of him will eventually recur through Liam’s resentment of Willow.

“Pity is a sentiment long lost to Everett Greenwood. Extinguished by those ruined men he carried during the War, by his brother’s betrayal, by the scrabbling nature of life—like a bright coin dropped into a black lake.

But here it is again, back from the muddy bottom, shining in his palm.”

This passage represents the first turning point in Everett’s development as a character. As an isolationist, his primary motivation is to get rid of the baby so that he can return to a solitary life. However, when he completes this objective, he feels concern for the baby, signaling that his true nature is rooted in compassion for others.

“All that day, while awaiting Blank’s call, Lomax’s eyes stray to the cigar box that sits on his desk, but he refuses to surrender to the temptation. His self-discipline is the only thing that’s set him apart from men like his father and this Blank character and all the other addicts and lowlifes that he runs down to make his living.”

Lomax’s emotional arc revolves around whether he will repeat his father’s mistakes, marking his character’s relationship to the theme of The True Value of Family Legacies. He believes that by avoiding the temptation of opium, he can rise above his circumstances, which he looks down upon. What complicates this is his chronic physical pain, which necessitates some form of pain relief.

“As the flame passes from warm to hot in his hand, Harris inventories all that was required to birth such a forest: whole oceans of rain and centuries of sunlight. The same sunlight that glinted upon the helmets of the Romans. The same winds that carried the first explorers to this continent. Here are trees taller than twenty-storey buildings; trees that had already attained immensity when the first printing press rolled. Baudelaire called them ‘living pillars of eternity’ and Harris agrees. Yet ask anyone who’s spent a life among them, and they’ll tell you that while trees are unimpeachably impressive, they’re also just weeds on poles.”

This passage demonstrates Harris’s need to assert his dominion over the world as a person who is blind. Harris’s blindness makes him feel like an outcast, so setting fire to the forest makes him feel like he is more powerful than it, given all the time and effort it took to bring it to its present size and stature.

“‘A tree will tell you everything you need to know about the variations of prosperity,’ Harris muses to Milner through a mouthful of pheasant. ‘Dark, thin rings indicate dry years. Thick rings, bountiful wet ones. And the lumberman in me suspects it may be thin rings for a while yet.’”

Harris frequently predicts the future, fulfilling the classical archetype of the prophet who is blind. In this case, his prediction not only speaks to the challenges his business faces in the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl but also to the challenges his descendants will face when his daughter decides to give up his wealth.

“‘During hard times nothing is nobody’s,’ Monahan says, as if reading his mind while sharing his onion sandwich with Everett as he drives. ‘Not really. Not forever.’”

Everett’s temporary employer delivers this statement, which resonates with Meena’s observation about capitalism in earlier in the novel. Whereas Meena expressed her idea as a question, Monahan is more resolute, declaring that the promise of ownership is an illusion revealed by death and time.

“Over the duration of the voyage, Harris finds that beneath his describer’s prickly honesty is a seam of doting sweetness. […] He describes things as they are, not as Harris wants to hear them. And his poet’s eye gazes into the very essences of things, whether the observation conforms to popular opinion or not.”

Harris’s annoyance over Feeney’s candid nature turns into admiration when he contrasts his describer against all the other people in his life. Because Harris cannot see, he values Feeney’s honesty as something close to true vision. He prefers this honesty to his other employees’ attempts to bend the truth to accommodate his needs and wishes.

“If life has taught him anything, it’s that you must be more secretive, more protective, and more pitiless than the next man. Either that or everything you are, everything you’ve built, and everyone you love, can be trampled in an instant.”

Harris and Feeney’s romantic relationship introduces new tension into Harris’s narrative. Their relationship puts his reputation and his wealth at stake, which will eventually result in his decision to betray Everett to Lomax.

“Everett has given her a temporary name: Pod. He avoided doing so thus far, the way a farmer leaves the pigs bound for his smokehouse anonymous. But Pod is still just a placeholder. A road name, a hobo moniker—something to be sloughed off the moment she settles into her real life, wherever that may be. He knows that trees often use birds and squirrels to spread their seeds, along with various flying contraptions like whirlers or cottony fluff that can blow great distances. Much of creation works this way: living things send versions of themselves out into the great puzzle of the future. And like a seed, this girl is in dire need of a hospitable place to land. And it’s his job to find it.”

Part 4 ends with this milestone in Everett’s character journey. He cements his attachment to Euphemia’s baby by giving her a name, which represents his conversion from isolationist to adoptive parent. While he does not consider himself her parent, he thinks of her needs as a parent might, comparing her to the seeds he normally nurtures into trees.

“Even the grandest trees must’ve once been seeds spun helpless on the wind, and then just meek saplings nosing up from the soil.”

This metaphor marks the opening of the earliest chronological narrative in Greenwood. As a result, the metaphor applies to the novel as a whole, suggesting that the Greenwood family is like a grand tree grown out of a meek sapling—in this case, the brotherhood of Harris and Everett Greenwood.

“Yes, we saw the Greenwood family begin, which was a privileged thing to witness, if you consider it. And while the pettiest of us claim to have known that those two boys were cursed from the day we found them barefoot and cowering next to those burning rail cars, the rest of us know the truth. That just as easily, it could’ve been Everett who received the proper schooling and then lost his sight. And that just as easily, it could’ve been Harris sacrificing himself for his brother and turning out the ruined, wandering man. As far as those Greenwood boys were concerned, we know it could’ve gone either way.”

The earliest chronological narrative of Greenwood ends with the acknowledgment the town’s decision to raise one of the boys in a certain way was entirely subjective. It is difficult for them to predict what would have happened if they chose differently, which underlines the theme of Fate’s Influence on Nature Versus Nurture.

“‘You think trees are sacred,’ he says. ‘That they love you. That they grow for your enjoyment. But those who really know trees know they’re also ruthless. They’ve been fighting a war for sunlight and sustenance since before we existed. And they’d gladly crush or poison every single one of us if it gave them any advantage.’”

Harris draws a subtle comparison between the trees and his industrial rivals in this passage. He compares the trees to combatants who fight for themselves. Later in the same chapter, Harris will reflect that John D. Rockefeller and other American industrialists see Canada as “a place for them to tear things out of” (299). Harris spurns both the environment and his rivals as obstacles to his success.

“‘I dream of trees, mostly,’ he says. ‘Trees I once knew. Trees I don’t know yet. Sometimes they’re aiding me, and sometimes they’re falling on me. Sometimes I’m planting them, and sometimes I’m cutting them down. But they’re always there. I think if you ever cut my head open, it’d be one big root ball in there, all tangled and grown together.’”

In contrast to Harris, Everett acknowledges the environment’s omnipresence in his life. He is reminded that the trees will always be greater than him, allowing him to either steward their existence or death; the trees, he believes, will never fade away, even after he has died.

“Inside the front cover, facing the first page, he frantically scrawls PROPERTY OF—the spelling of which he only guesses at. With that part done, he writes a name, first then last, as legibly as his unpractised hand can muster. It’s a name he invents during the very act of setting it down, a name he hasn’t a clue how to spell, though he writes it anyway. It’s the name he’ll give Pod after their circumstances become decent and permanent. A name, he imagines, befitting the fine woman she’ll someday become.”

This passage represents the culmination of Everett’s development as an adoptive father. His decision to give Pod a real name that represents his hopes and dreams, which he formalizes with a label on Euphemia’s diary, emphasizes The True Value of Family Legacies.

“Maybe it’s a child’s notion that such decisions are consciously made at all, when in truth, we live at the mercy of the world. Financial crashes and train crashes. Earthquakes. Wildfires. Hurricanes and cyclones. Diseases and droughts. Gears turn. Levers lift. A boy squeezes the bulb of an eyedropper and releases a rubber strap with a whoosh, and everything changes forever.”

Lomax has this revelation when he repeats the cycle of abuse that his father committed when he abandoned his family. Unless he can break that cycle, this passage hints that Lomax’s character arc will end with the realization that nature will always be greater than man’s attempts to overcome it. This contributes to the theme of Fate’s Influence on Nature Versus Nurture.

“The old saying goes that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But in Willow’s experience, the opposite is more likely true. An apple is nothing but a seed’s escape vehicle, just one of the ingenious ways they hitch rides—in the bellies of animals, or by taking to the wind—all to get as far away from their parents as they possibly can. So is it any wonder the daughters of dentists open candy stores, the sons of accountants become gambling addicts, the children of couch potatoes run marathons? She’s always believed that most people’s lives are lived as one great refutation of the ones that came before them.”

Through this passage, the novel makes the explicit argument that each generation rebels against its predecessor. The composition of this passage resembles Jake’s earlier criticism of the idiom “know your roots,” deploying a similar criticism of the idiom “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” This cross-generational similarity introduces a subtle contradiction to the idea of rebellion by validating Harris’s earlier claim that everything repeats itself.

“This is the carpenter’s painful truth: nothing is true.

[…] We think we live in boxes until we look closer and find we’re in fact living in irregular shapes, in big, misshapen accidents.

Which makes carpenters the high priests of living with mistakes. And while sloppiness is the most grievous insult you could throw at another carpenter, true perfection is maddeningly unattainable, which is why it’s never spoken of. Because even after you cut a piece of wood and lay it straight, it lives on after you’re finished, soaking up moisture, twisting, bowing, and warping into unintended forms. Our lives are no different.”

Liam’s narrative winds down with the epiphany that he cannot resolve all the loose threads in his life because the world is naturally inclined to favor asymmetry. This insight can be applied to the novel’s other narrative threads, such as Willow’s failure to reconcile with Harris before his death or the ambiguity surrounding Jake’s true lineage.