summary of poem number 8 on killing a tree stanza wise
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Stanza-wise Summary of On Killing a Tree:
Stanza 1
It tells us that killing a tree is not easy. It is very time-consuming. A jab of a knife is not enough. A tree grows straight out the earth, nourishing itself on the nutrients found in the earth, along with years of sunlight, water, and air. And even though the bark looks irregular and scaly, leave and branches sprout of it.
Stanza 2
The hack of a knife or an axe, or chopping off a bough is not enough to bring a tree down. These jabs may inflict pain on the tree but the pain is not enough to kill it. The ‘bleeding bark’, the part where it has been wounded or where a bough is chopped off, will heal with time. New green twigs will grow again; boughs chopped off will be replaced by new boughs, which will grow into their former size.
Stanza 3
In this stanza, the poet explains how a tree could be killed. He says to kill a tree its root has to be pulled out. The root, which is the source of a tree’s life, must be pulled out of its cave, in order to mortally harm the tree. By ‘earthcave’ the poet means the point, deep inside the earth, where the root is attached. Once the center, the life source- the root is exposed, the tree becomes vulnerable. The source is described as white and wet, probably alluding to tree sap which is a white liquid.
Stanza 4
The exposed life source, which when left open to the sun and air, will be scorched due to the heat and the air won’t be able to reach the scorched places to relieve it of the heat. Slowly, it will start to become brown, with all the softness fading out leaving a hard, lifeless remainder behind. With time, it will start to wither, become dry and bent out of shape, leaving a corpse where a tree used to be. In short, the exposure will leave the root vulnerable to all vagaries of weather, which will ultimately weaken the tree and kill it.
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Here is the summary. It is a little messed up but the individual no of the stanzas are written at the top..
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