Once there was a tree,
and she loved a little boy.
The opening line introduces the only two characters of the story. This opening quickly, simply and effectively sets the stage for everything that is to come. Everything that will happen is based on the tree’s love for the little boy. The literary device of personification is utilized here; personification is the attribution of human characteristics to non-human things.
And the boy loved tree…
very much.
And the tree was happy.
These lines indicate that the love of the tree for the boy is requited. An unrequited love is when one person loves another, but the other doesn’t love the person back. Not only do these lines make clear that this is a love that that goes back and forth, it also sets up the stage of the use of another literary device: repetition. The motif of “and the tree was happy” will recur throughout the story.
But the boy stayed away
for a long time…
and the tree was sad.
And then one day
the boy came back
The meat of the narrative is a series of episodes in which the boys goes away for a period of time and when he comes back he is older. The passage of time has served to change his need for the tree. With each new arrival after a period away, the man whom the boy has become takes away a little more of the tree until the only thing left is a stump.
He would climb up her trunk
and swing from her branches.
The important thing to note about this quote (and others) is the use of the pronoun to describe the tree. Sometimes the tree is referred to simply as “the tree” but whenever the tree is addressed using a pronoun it is with “she” and “her.” This has led to a near-universal agreement in the serious critiques of the story that the tree is more than just a tree; the tree is a metaphor for the boy’s mother and the story a metaphor for a mother’s unconditional love.
. . . the boy
Another element suggesting that the tree is a metaphor for the boy’s mother is the fact that throughout the story—from his days as a young swinging on the branches right up to the concluding image of an old using the stump as a resting place—the other character is always referred to as “boy.” Though both human and the tree are clearly shown as aging, in the eyes of the tree he never becomes a man, but remains a boy. Much as many mothers always tend to see their son as their little boy even after he ages into a man.
