The Overstory

“Why not an American named Winston?” 

During his journey to America, Ma Sih Hsuin becomes Winston Ma. The change of name is not considered an affront; rather, he casts himself in a mythical role. Just as the figures from myths changed into animals and flowers, he has transformed into an American. The rhetorical question posed hints to the energy and eagerness with which Sih Hsuin has embraced his transformation. His optimism and zealousness are yet to be dimmed; at this moment, the idea of America is still quasi-mythical. 

“A tree is the passage between earth and sky.” 

The mode of this message is more important than the meaning. Adam carves the words in sloppy handwriting onto a piece of wood he recovered from his sister’s dying tree. He is the only one who can recognize the symbolic importance of the tree; Leigh throws the piece of wood away. After she goes missing, Adam burns it as a tribute to his sister. The tree—or what remains of it—is his means of reaching out emotionally to his sister. Lacking in social skills, symbolic gestures such as this are Adam’s way of communicating with the world. While his actions seem strange to some, they follow an explicit logic, and other people’s inability to recognize this logic justifies Adam’s views on humanity’s inadequacy. 

“But a legal business deal? Rights and ownership?” 

Dorothy’s inability to commit to her marriage to Ray reflects her determination not to be viewed as property. She spends her days listens to lawyers litigate, and she knows Ray is an excellent lawyer. She does not want her life, her love, and her future to be bandied about in court or commodified, treated the same way lawyers treat everything else. Ray writes back to her, assuring her that this is not how he views their love. It is only when he suggests that they grow a garden together to represent their love that she finally accepts that their marriage is built on a foundation of love and affection, that it is not in danger. 

“Call it the moon. A stumpy desolation spread in front of him.” 

On seeing that the logging company has devastated the landscape, Douggie compares the view to the moon. There is a clear juxtaposition here: Douggie grew up at a time when the moon landing was fresh in everyone’s mind, when it was the pinnacle of human achievement. But now it has become a negative, lifeless, and horrid place to which he does not want to return. The comparison between the deforested world and the moon reveals Douggie’s disillusionment; one of mankind’s greatest achievements has been brought to Earth and, like everything else man achieves, has brought only death and destruction, hidden behind a veneer of beauty. 

“The seed his father plants in him will eat the world.”

Neelay’s life is imbued with an ecological destiny. Though he might see himself as tied to computers—inorganic, digital creations—he is affected by the idea in a biological fashion. His obsession grows like a seed, beginning with a small project he undertakes with his father, before flowering into an education, a profession, and eventually an obsession. The seed of the idea grows inside him, turning the digital and the inorganic into something remarkably biological in the way it grows. Neelay is the conduit through which organic life can cross over into the digital realm. 

“The plan that now uses him, although he thinks it’s his.” 

The previous quote is fully realized by the end of the chapter. Neelay is struck by the wondrous trees he finds in the university arboretum and devises a plan. He wants to make a video game that reflects the depth and wonder of creation, a game that will explain the complexity of life to humanity. This is the final blossoming of the seed of an idea that was planted in him at a young age. Part of that idea is how Neelay believes the plan to be his own when it is simply part of a larger biological network that has been affecting him and interacting with him for far longer than he could ever know.  

“But nothing is less isolated or more social than a tree.” 

This quote sounds like an oxymoron, a contradiction between the isolation and the social nature of a tree. But rather than describing the inherent juxtaposition of the statement, it alludes more to the general otherness and unknowability of nature. Set in 1950, in a country drunk on science, the more that is uncovered and learned about trees by companies like the one that employs Patty’s father, the clearer it becomes that they are alien. Trees are familiar and close by but an utter mystery at the same time. They are an organic contradiction in terms, just like the above statement. 

“Clicks and chatter disturb the cathedral hush.” 

The imagery used in the phrase cathedral hush emphasizes the importance of the uncut forest to Patty: to her, such a place is holy ground. The reverence she has for nature reaches religious levels, though nature itself delights in its iconoclasm. The clicks and chatter are natural sounds, keen to break the hushed and awed silence that might permeate a cathedral. There is no way to tame these natural spaces or impose silence on them. Unlike human constructs like religion, Patty knows that nature is a wild and powerful entity. 

“He’s staring at seasons, the year’s pendulum, the burst of spring and the enfolding of fall, the beat of a two-four song recorded here, in a medium that the piece itself created.” 

Sitting at his desk, the prisoner uses the grain of the wood as a metaphor for his limited linguistic abilities. To him, learning to talk is not only about human languages. The language of the tree is also real and can be found in the shapes and oddities of the grain. Being able to read this would provide him with a great insight. This desire is demonstrated by other characters, and the epiphany experienced by the prisoner is one other characters will come to understand over the course of the novel. That is to say, the language of the trees and its importance. 

“He doesn’t want to play in any more plays, ever again.” 

Ray is exhausted. The lengthy process of fertility treatments and the emotional exhaustion of acting have left him with little energy. By this point in the narrative, all he does is argue with Dorothy, and both are having to deal with their relationship’s rapidly poisonous atmosphere. Ray is not just sick of acting on stage—he is sick of acting in the relationship. The theatre was such a large part of the couple’s nascent love, but now the very thought of acting has become yet another venomous aspect of their depressing existence. 

“People keep themselves too warm.” 

Nick has spent a decade living in the house where his parents and grandparents died. He has been making art based on the trees, an attempt to process his trauma. This quote is a hint at his family’s fate and his embrace of hardship: the family was killed by a leaky gas heater and, ever since, he has treated interior heating with suspicion. Just like Olivia, he is a man with many regrets. But his life, unwittingly, has come to focus on trees. 

“The plans they once had for that room seem older than anything on their shelves.” 

Ray and Dorothy fill the void in their lives with books. As their house fills up, the room that was destined to be a nursery becomes an extension of their library. The metaphorical void is filled by physical objects, though neither vocalizes the pain that they are trying to mask. In a wry manner, the plans to have a child are quite literally shelved, as the entire extra room becomes a space for books rather than children. 

“But more than she hates conviction, she hates sneaky power.” 

For her entire life, Mimi has been taught the importance of staying within the mainstream. But now, disgusted by the actions of the logging company, she feels compelled to push back against authority. The sense of injustice and “sneaky power” that the logging company exhibits overpowers her loathing of righteousness and conviction. The strength of feeling stirred in her by the plight of the forests fills the hole in her life that has been missing for so long. It gives her purpose and belonging, a sensation that she has lacked since the unexpected death of her father. 

“Then Nick is alone with this woman who has commandeered his life.” 

Once up in the tree, Nick is finally able to achieve some perspective on the strange turn his life has taken. In a short amount of time, he has met and run away with (and fallen in love with) a young woman who listens to the voice in her head. The position in the tree provides a physical distance from the ground and the rest of society, which demonstrates to him how far he has come. It is not just his fear of heights that he is conquering, but his fear of committing to anyone in the wake of his family’s death. 

“Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe in the future that he shall be.” 

The quote which adorns the office of Neelay’s company is appropriate in the context of the novel. Here, Neelay’s ambition is best summarized by a quote borrowed from another author (Jorge Luis Borges) and translated into another language. It is a simulation of literature, an attempt to approximate Borges’s original words and apply them in a new environment. Neelay’s career mirrors this: enchanted by the wonder of nature, he has tried to translate the language of the natural world into code and use it to create a simulation of real life. Neelay’s games are not necessarily like the quote itself; instead, they are like the use of the quote as it appears in the novel. 

“There are consolations that the strongest human love is powerless to give.” 

The impact of the loss of the tree is felt so greatly that it divests Adam of his cynicism. After his time on the protest platform, he loses the sneering view he took of those who fought for the forest. When he sees Olivia break down beside the tree stump, and how Nick is unable to comfort her, Adam appreciates the devastating emotional impact of the loss. Even the strength of the love between the two protestors cannot overcome the sorrow they feel at the loss of the great tree, a notion that destroys Adam’s preconceptions just as the tree itself was destroyed. 

“The hopeless incompetence of the idealist temperament should have crashed the place long ago. But the Free Bioregion rolls on.” 

The more time Adam spends at the protest, the more radicalized he becomes. Life in the camp works despite itself; the cause is one he believes in, but the tone and the approach of the protestors should cause him to cringe. But he cannot help himself from empathizing with their approach. That the camp functions so well reveals to him an alternative mode of thought, stripping away his preconceptions. The reveal is a mirror of his first steps into psychology, showing him an alternative structure to explain human behavior. 

“Everything is happening, unfixable, forever, for real.” 

The failed bombing attack collapses in a way which mirrors humanity’s attempts at ecological preservation. The logging continues and the destruction of nature continues. Even though everything is collapsing and going wrong, there is no way to stop the bombs from exploding or repair the damage that has been done. Olivia becomes a metaphor for the lost forests, the victim of all the failed attempts at preservation that were doomed in the face of humanity’s progress. The stark reality of the protestors hopeless fight in mirrored in the hopeless bombing attempt. 

“Everything’s dying a gold-plated death.” 

Neelay’s game has reached a difficult moment. In trying to recreate the wonder of nature, he recreated the crushing banality of actual existence. There is no escapism left anymore, as the profit motive introduced into the game destroyed people’s capacity to experience true enjoyment. Money motivates the game, rather than wonder. The gold-plated death of Neelay’s game is that the game has never been more profitable but, in doing so, it has lost what made it special in the first place. The game has come to mirror humanity’s relationship to actual nature. 

“Species clog every surface, reviving that dead metaphor at the heart of the word bewilderment.” 

Through her journeys, Patty has tried everything to emphasize the importance of environmentalism. In this quote, she tries a new approach: attempting to convey the wonder of the Brazilian rainforests by appealing to etymology. In doing so, she reminds her audience of the history of forests, of how far back humanity’s wonder and astonishment at these strange and unknown places can be traced. It is another attempt but—like the others—it only reaches so many people. 

“She can’t hear but she can smell their nerves.” 

Patty’s lecture switches from a convivial celebration of nature to an accusation. Nervous and anxious, she worries about how some of the world’s most powerful people will react to her accusing them of killing the earth. The scale of her accusation is reflected in her physical reaction; she understands the power of her audience and the strength of the crime she has suggested that they have committed. The physical manifestation of her anxieties reveals the subtext of the lecture: how it has turned from a celebration into an allegation of an incredibly serious crime. 

“He was thinking oak. He was thinking Douglas-fir or Yew.” 

Standing in the courtroom, hearing his sentence, Adam’s conversion into an environmentalist is complete. His means of processing the length of the prison sentence is to compare it to trees, thus equating the value of his life with that of a plant. Additionally, the choice of trees is noteworthy: Douglas-firs hint at Douggie, who helped to convict Adam, while yew trees were traditionally planted in graveyards, hinting at the fatalistic nature of Adam’s sentence. 

“Prison may become a hideaway from the sentence outside.” 

Adam is reigned to his fate and knows he must be imprisoned for his crimes. But in being incarcerated, he alters the dynamic of his situation. Rather than being kept away from the beauty and the wonders of nature, he does not have to watch the natural world’s slow and painful death. In this sense, prison is a relief.