Postmodern Fiction

¶ … Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson [...] importance of trees in the novel. While this novel chronicles the life of Isobel Fairfax, trees form the very roots of the novel, just as they form the root of all existence. Trees endure long after people have lived and died, as this novel clearly shows. Trees have also played a vital role in life since the very beginnings of time, as this novel illustrates.

Trees are as much a part of life as breathing, and in this novel, they form the setting for some magical circumstances and fairy-tale qualities. Throughout this quirky novel, the author refers to trees, and the importance they play in our lives. In fact, she even equates the heroine, Isobel, to a tree. She writes, "My body a trunk, my feet taproots, my toes probing like pale little moles through the dark soil. My head a crown of leaves growing towards the light" (Atkinson 25).

The novel uses trees as symbols of life, and as symbols of death, for the forests are forever disappearing. Isobel lives on a street named for a tree and lined with trees. Trees are present everywhere in the book; so much so that the reader begins to take them for granted, just as people take them for granted every day. The trees symbolize everything missing in modern life, and how people take the most common things for granted, never thinking that one day they will disappear.

In addition to the symbols the trees represent, the author's description of trees throughout the novel also adds a sense of unreality and strangeness to the book. Many of the characters disappear into the woods never to return, so the woods are a place of magic and illusion, and the trees take on new life in their own domain. Trees are not always benevolent and good, as this novel indicates. Trees are the very center of our souls, but they can also harbor dark secrets.

The trees in the novel, especially the Lady Oak, are long-lived and symbols of strength and endurance to the people of Glebelands. In the book, trees also indicate man's endurance, and help keep the time shifting elements of the novel cohesive. Wherever Isobel goes in time, the Lady Oak is there, and it will endure long after Isobel and the others are gone.

Interestingly, the book takes many references from Shakespeare's play "As you Like it," and in fact, that play is set in the Forest of Arden, where Isobel lives. This explains the many references to Shakespeare in the book, and helps enhance the illusion of darkness and mystery surrounding the forest that has served as a setting for hundreds of years. What makes forests so mysterious? Perhaps it is the darkness of the deep forest, and how forests can hide many secrets.

Just as in Shakespeare's play, in the Forest of Arden, identities are blurred and relationships alter with time (or time-travel) in this novel. Isobel discovers the truth about her family and their dark secrets in the forest, and the truth about Audrey and Mrs. Baxter, too. The forest therefore is critical to the novel, for it provides coherence during the time-travel scenes, but it also provides a sense of truth and coming of age.

Isobel discovers herself as the novel progresses, and discovers her oneness with the forest and the area. The forest has survived many generations of the Fairfax family, but eventually, the forest will die, just as the Fairfaxes and their legacy will die. Trees give a sense of permanence to the book and the setting, The fairy-tale qualities of the book are enhanced by the references to trees, and in fact, Isobel turns into a tree at one point when she runs away from several teenaged boys.

Ultimately, the forests in the novel are deep, dark, and secretive. They swallow people, and people's lives. They are also places of life and transformation. Just as trees transform from ghostly branches to green buds in spring, lives that experience the forest are often transformed and made new again. In the forest, Isobel discovers secrets from her past, and looks toward the future. In the forest, it seems anything is possible, and anything can happen.

The forest is like another character in the novel because it plays such an important role throughout the book, from saving Isobel from attempted rape (when she turns into a tree), to being the setting for weird and violent acts. Without the forest, the book would lack depth and detail, and would have no cohesiveness to bind it together. The book, because of its many characters and shifting in time, must use something to keep the many threads woven together, and the forest serves this purpose quite nicely.

The forest, menacing and foreboding, or refuge and haven, also plays the part of duplicity well, and makes the reader more aware of the many-shifting settings in the novel. Isobel and the forest have much in common - they both endure through time and grow and mature as the book reaches its climax. The forest and the Fairfaxes share a long and varied history,.