Describe what you see in the poem the banyan tree
Answers
Answer:
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Explanation:
The Felling of the Banyan Tree focuses on a particular time in a family's history when a drastic decision has to be made by the father. This decision involves the demolition of houses on a hill and the cutting down of a huge tree which has stood for centuries in the same spot.
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM:
The Felling of the Banyan Tree explores a special time in the life of a sensitive speaker, when family roots were torn out, when the old way of life had to give way to the new.
From the first line the reader is informed that this decision was taken by the patriarch, the father, and the energy which directly affects things is therefore is masculine.
There is no reason given for such drastic action, no specific economical or logical details offered as to why this clearance of houses and land should occur.
In opposition to this masculine approach - antithetical - is that of the feminine, represented in the family by the grandmother, a spokesperson for nature, for the sacred aura attached to the remaining trees.
She introduces a religious element, based on tradition, which tells that to harm a tree is an actual crime. The speaker focuses on the names of the trees that are, in rather violent language, 'massacred' by the father.
And in the shape of the banyan there is the symbol of family itself, the great rooted tree representing centuries of living, of connection between earth and heaven.
It too is cut down. The second stanza gives the reader all the details...how long, how much, how many. A whole ecosystem is gradually brought down, extinguished perhaps.