How does the banyan tree stand out as different from other trees? What details of the tree does the poet highlight in the poem?

Open in App

Solution

In Bhagvad Geeta, Krishna said, “Of all the trees I am Banyan Tree”. Banyan is considered to be the most pious tree in Hindu mythology. It is believed that Buddha renounced under the banyan tree in Bodh Gaya. There are many more such stories that this tree encompasses in its age old aerial roots that fall to the ground mysteriously. The poet is impressed by its huge figure as he says, “the great tree revealed its rings of two hundred years”. The physical description of the banyan carves an image of an enigma. The tree's aerial roots dangling from above to reach out to the ground. They are the proof of all the years and decades the tree has lived. It is a tough tree and it takes more that usual effort to bring it down. And when it happens, all watched it fall in terror and fascination, the slaughter of the age old banyan tree. It fees as if a raw mythology was revealed it age to the poet and his folk.

Suggest Corrections

Similar questions

Q. How does a banyan tree help soil?

(i) Where are the trees in the poem? What do their roots, their leaves and their twigs do?

(ii) What does the poet compare their branches to?

Now that you have read the poem in detail, we can begin to ask what the poem might mean. Here are two suggestions. Can you think of others?

(i) Does the poem present a conflict between man and nature? Compare it with A Tiger in the Zoo. Is the poet suggesting that plants and trees, used for ‘interior decoration’ in cities while forests are cut down, are ‘imprisoned’, and need to‘break out’?

(ii) On the other hand, Adrienne Rich has been known to use trees as a metaphor for human beings: this is a recurrent image in her poetry.What new meanings emerge from the poem if you take its trees to be symbolic of this particular meaning?

Q. The following pictograph shows different kinds of trees planted in a park. Each symbol represents 8 trees. Look at the pictograph adn answer the questions given below.

Banyan tree	Figure
Neem tree	Figure
Mango tree	Figure

(i) How many mango trees are there?
(ii) How many banyan trees are there?
(iii) How many neem trees are there?
(iv) How many trees are there in all?

How does Frost present nature in this poem? The following questions may help you to think of an answer.

(i) What are the birds that are usually named in poems? Do you think a crow is often mentioned in poems? What images come to your mind when you think of a crow?

(ii) Again, what is “a hemlock tree”? Why doesn’t the poet write about a more ‘beautiful’ tree such as a maple, or an oak, or a pine?

(iii) What do the ‘crow’ and ‘hemlock’ represent − joy or sorrow? What does the dust of snow that the crow shakes off a hemlock tree stand for?

Join BYJU'S Learning Program