The Tree of Man: The Saga of the Seasons of the Year and Life

Abstract

Patrick White is perhaps the only fiction writer of Australian fiction known to the ordinary reader. This is mainly because of the Nobel Prize he won for his novel. The Tree of Man is the first novel that won him international recognition. Coming back to Australia after a fourteen year absence he started with an old manuscript of ‘A Life Sentence’ and renamed it The Tree of Man. He described it as a novel “with no plot except the only one of living and dying” (Balachandran 122).

The Tree of Man is based on the metaphor of life as a journey – journey through time. White “rediscovers Australian landscape and explores the theme of the lonely, heroic quest through” (Colmer 42) the life of Parker. It is the story of a small farmer Stan Parker and his wife Amy, making productive land out of a block of bush, what is later called Durilgai. Durilgai is just a few miles from Sydney and is eventually swallowed by suburbs. The Parkers have two children, Ray and Thelma. Ray in course of time leaves home, leads a notorious life and meets his tragic end. Thelma marries Mr. Forsdyke, a well off and genteel solicitor and becomes a social success. Amy commits adultery with a commercial traveller and Stan mentally commits adultery by lusting for the beautiful Madeleine Armstrong. In course of the plot there is a bush fire which burns down Glastonbury, and then there is also a flood which almost washes them up. A brief period of drought too is faced by the Parkers.