Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams

David Duffy · 07 Jun 2007, 06:12 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au (David Duffy)
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 16:12:29 +1000 (EST)
Subject: (urth) Peace - Elm trees and empty dreams
In-Reply-To: <CAE39466-06FD-47F7-AD68-CCC37DD40EF4 at gmail.com>
References: <CAE39466-06FD-47F7-AD68-CCC37DD40EF4 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0706071547150.22454 at orpheus.qimr.edu.au>

On Wed, 6 Jun 2007, Matthew King wrote:

> Caveat lector:  spoilers for Peace below.
>
> The elm tree that falls in the first line of Peace is planted on the
> grave of Alden Dennis Weer, the book's narrator.  As the Sergeant
> says in The Pirates of Penzance, "This is perplexing."
>
> Leaving aside the mystery of a story told by a ghost, is there any
> significance to the tree being an elm?  I cannot find, in the
> archives of this list, any discussion on this particular topic.
>

I am positive that someone stated some time ago on the list that elms 
were planted on graves to keep the spirit underneath at rest.  However, a 
quick google suggests that usually rowans appear in this context.

I did find a review of Thomas Campanella's _Republic of Shade_, 
a history of elm plantings in America:  "a central symbol of New 
England and American life in the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries...planted on wedding days or on the birth of children", and then 
in bulk to "ornament" towns.  So planting them is very characteristic of 
the time and place the story is set.  I think _Peace_ is, among other 
things, an elegy to that era (and thought a lot about it reading _My 
Antonia_).

So they may stand in as an American equivalent of the rowan (those planted 
are, I didn't know, a native tree), as osage orange is to _TWK_ and 
Faery.

Cheers, David Duffy.

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