The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino is a convincing farce/ fiction about Cosimo living in Italy during Napoleon’s rule. He escapes his authoritarian parents by taking to the trees and never coming down until his death at the age of 65. At the beginning of the book, the reader isn’t yet convinced that the author can keep the character living in the trees long enough for the entire story. By the end, Calvino finds the wildest imaginations to keep the reader attached to the story to it’s very ending.
Told in the perspective of Cosimo’s younger brother, he always saw Cosimo on the trees as he supplied him with basic needs. Cosimo would also hunt for food on the trees. His father is oblivious to his son as he is more focused on his social class. His mother is a war fanatic who encourages his son’s actions. Since the forest is large and intertwined around the neighborhood, he finds life easy as he retrieves necessities through a basket lowered to the ground with a rope. He builds a connection to the town through his many encounters with people of all classes, including Napoleon himself. The locals develop an infatuation with him, and they come to defer to him as Young Baron. Cosimo becomes well known in Italy and beyond.
The Baron in the Trees is a story of acquiring freedom by escaping the life of being earthbound and tied down to ideas that prevent you from living a full life. Through Cosimo’s pledge and imagination, he escapes the ground and forever sticks to the trees, finding new ways to live. He discovers different perspectives of life that push him to do the impossible. Cosimo shows the limitless powers of imagination and their potential to bring progress to the world. The book explores different aspects of individualism as it seeks to develop a connection between the world outside and the world in mind. As the story winds down, so does moments of pure joy and happiness, signifying the different mundane stages of human life that we all have to go through despite social or economic class.
