The Tree of Man(1955)
1. Character of Stan Parker
Q. Discuss the thematic concerns of Patrick White in ‘The Tree of Man’ Or Evaluated The Tree of Man as a typical Commonwealth Text. Or Draw a character – sketch of Stan Parker
Introduction:-
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author who is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize. Critics who have asserted Patrick Victor Martindale (1912-1990) greatness,
“An unmistakably major writer”,
“Tower over most other living novelists”,
“The hardly of Australia
“Potentiality of greater than any other living novelist.”
Patrick white is a great modern novelist who has tried to extend the frontier of the novel form in the direction of poetry. His novels are religious poems and their subject is man in all his aspects and the universe in relation to man. He is a ‘vitalist’ who finds the world as a process of becoming, process of spiritual evolution man, man’s transformation into a higher form of life. He puts forth the ideas of pure being which is simply a state of “is-ness” with the whole of creation. According to while, religion means the feeling, acts and experience of individuals in their solitude. For White, the poetic vision doe not include any deity or superhuman person but the omnipresent Divinity in things. He sees the entire natural world as a manifestation of divinity. He finds God in everything, every religion, every art.
Story’s in Brief
v protagonist of this novel.
Stan is the protagonist of this novel. In the novel White portrays the married life of Stan Parker, a farmer of Durilgai and his wife Amy. The word ‘tree’ in the title of this novel stands for Stan’s quest of growth, for inexhaustible life. In Stan we find ‘the melancholic longing for permanence, while Amy stands of motion in life. Stan’s mother expects him to be teacher of a preacher. He should teach the people ‘the word of poets and God; but the young Stan sets out ins each of permanence. He removes all the bushes from his farm and whishes that his wife should live peacefully in his ‘honest house’ Here they take roots. They milk cows and grow cabbages. Amy plants garden. The neighbours also join them.
v A tension between the husband and the wife
Another influence that proves to be a shaping force in the development of the action of this novel is the tension between the husband and the wife. When Stan takes Amy home just after his marriage, his cart jolts through the windy countryside. On the way, he dos don’t waste his time by talking to her or by showing her the beautiful scene around. He identifies himself simply with the permanence. Referring to Amy’s response to such a cold treatment White remarks, “She had begun to hate the wind, and the distance, and the road, because her importance tended to dwindle. She is a radical woman. She is restless and hungry of Stan’s love. The rose bush which she plants in the first days of her marriage serves as an outward sign of her emotions. Amy’s rose bush is juxtaposed to Stan’s tree. The giant size of the trees overshadows the robe bush. We find the same image of rose bush in White’s earlier novel, ‘The Aunt’s Story” and also in Hawthorne
v Stan’s spiritual rebirth.
Later on, Amy becomes older and harder. The roses and cabbages of her youth are replaced in her middle age by the shrubs. After her adultery with Leo, she reaches the climax of her frustration and despair. She realizes that she has never been worthy of Stan. This illumination of her should make her weary. On the mirror of her room, she writes the word, ‘Leo’ an act shameful if desirable, but soon she rubs it off savagely. Stan is aware of her affair with Leo. His discovery of Amy’s infidelity leads him to his loss of faith in God as well as man. So his life continues. He endured tension and feel that ‘only the present is real’. Both Amy and Stan accept each other’s mastery. After a temporary psyche death there is a gradual evolution of Stan’s spiritual rebirth.
v As a failure father and inaccessible character:-
Another importance and vividly drawn theme in the novel is the generation gap between father and son. Stan’s children, Ray and Thelma are a disappointment to him. They show the inability of love deeply; to express strong emotion, even to form friendships because they revel in their own world of thoughts. Stan is inaccessible and lacks affection, while Amy is possessive. She drives Ray away from her. Thelma does a secretarial course at the College for Business Girls and later marries her employer, Dudley Forsdyke in an attempt to achieve gentility and perfection. For her, love means a house and other possessions. Her marriage is without love. She has the spirituality and sexuality of her father. Sometimes she rises to great heights but fails to remain there. On the other handy, Ray hates the gentleness in himself and ruins his life. He shares familiar fascination and disloyalties of Amy he deserts his first wife, Elsie who has a with whom Amy develops a strange attachment. Later on, Ray leaves his mistress, Lola and is shot in the stomach.
v His achievement of oneness with God
Thus the Parker family resembles to the four rivers of paradise that rise at the foot of the Tree of Life, or the four cardinal points or elements. According to a Hindi belief completeness has four angles and it is supported by four legs. A great psychologist, Jung has built up a pattern of the human psyche which has for functions; Sensing, intuiting, feeling and thinking. Here these four members of the Parker family show four ways of living; Stan achieves oneness with God and Nature; Amy becomes bitter and confused, Ray dies a sordid death and Thelma become a spiritual non-entity
At the end Stan becomes one with God. Amy still clings to her world of possessions. Stan dies with a hope that his grandson would write a poem of life.
“So he would write a poem of life of all life,
what he did not know but knew”
The novel ends with a note the bush continues to lie even as human beings succeed in generations. White says, “So that in the end there were the trees. The boy walking, so that in the end, there was no end.” “The tree of man’ is used here as multi-faceted image which spreads leaves of heightened and illuminated awareness. Thus “The tree of Man” is the story of a layman’s journey from ignorance to spiritual awareness.
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