Sushil Ghosh asked 6 years ago
Do you agree with the poet in Henry Cuyler Bunner’s “Heart of the Tree” that a nation’s growth depends upon the wealth of trees? Why or why not?
Yes definitely the growth of nation depends on tree…or wealth that tree gives to the nation. A tree not just useful in giving oxygen to humans, home to birds or shade to traveller but it also provides different useful products like fruits, vegetables…and other eatables which are consumed by whole nation…after years of giving eatables or useful products like timber, wax, gum, resin…it also gives good quality wood at its death…which makes the commercial profits for the nation… a single tree gives birth to lots of its friends which make the whole forest one…like a drop a water makes the sea…
The statement that “a nation’s growth depends upon the wealth of trees”, when taken literally, is a misunderstanding of what the poet actually means to say in the poem. This is what the lines say —
A nation’s growth from sea to sea
Stirs in his heart who plants a tree.
The poet intends to say that a tree planter has a helpful attitude and a progressive mind. He is the one who inspires others to be helpful as well. Plantation is thus a symbolic act of goodness that inspires many other such acts. And this is how the tree planter, and plantation as a whole, hold the key to a nation’s growth. So, of course, I agree with the statement when viewed with its symbolic interpretation.
This is already explained in more detail in the following links:
In what way a nation’s growth depends upon plating trees?
Explain: Who in the hollow of His hand/ Holds all the growth of all our land.
According to the poet, the person who plants the tree is quite generous. He looks after his neighborhood and thinks about the future. He is doing one of the greatest things a person could ever do to repay nature. He/She also inspires others to do the same act of kindness.
Yes I do agree that nation’s growth depends upon the wealth of the trees as healthy brain resides in a healthy body and trees help in keeping the body healthy by their nutritious fruits and pure air through which the brain will be healthy and nation will develop.