A POISON TREE ANALYSIS USING POST-STRUCTURALISM

I

INTRODUCTION

A Poison Tree is a poem about the growing anger. It was first published in 1793 and was written by William Blake. He was born on November 28, 1757 in London. Blake married Catherine Boucher at age 25, and she worked with him on most of his artistic creations. Together they published a book of Blake's poems and drawings called Songs of Innocence. Blake poured his whole being into his work. The lack of public recognition sent him into a severe depression which lasted from 1810-1817, and even his close friends thought him insane. He died on August 12, 1827, and is buried at Bunhill Fields, London.

The writer chooses this poem because the title is a paradox. Poison means something dangerous and can be harmful, which leads into death. Contradictorily, tree represents life, because it produces oxygen that brings life for humanity. Therefore, the writer wants to analyze it further using Post Structuralism, and find out the metaphor, paradox, and contradiction hidden behind this poem to reveal the theme.

In deconstruction theory by Jacques Derrida, the writer will analyze it in three stages, verbal, textual, and linguistic. From the verbal stage, it begins with metaphor, paradox, and contradiction. In textual the writer will see the disunity, which means shift or break in the poem. In linguistic stage, the writer will identify the theme from the analysis of verbal and textual stages.

II

THEORY

The writer will analyze A Poison Tree with post-structuralism theory. In post structuralism, it is originated from philosophy, which teaches that knowledge is difficult to achieve. There is no certain structure in language, and sometimes we can find the meaning not only from words. The meaning can always change and there is a hidden meaning behind words.  The tone is also filled with emotions. It is more anxious about language; they believe that language is unpredictable. Post-structuralism persuades reader to believe that our environment affects our thought.

In deconstructing a literary work, we have to read the text against itself to find some contraries, which will guide us to the hidden and deeper meaning. It can be analyzed through three stages.

First is the verbal stage. Here we find out the metaphor, paradoxes, and contradictions. The second is the textual stage. We find the disunity here. In deconstructive theory, many texts have disunity, which is called shifts or breaks. It can be in tones, point of view, attitude, tense, focus, or time. Disunity can leads us to find out the contradiction. The third is linguistic stage; here from the contradiction we can find the theme of the story. From the surface meaning, we can also know the deeper meaning.

III

ANALYSIS

3.1    Verbal Stage

3.1.1        Metaphor

Title: A Poison Tree

Tree is the metaphor for anger which is growing on and on, and finally bears fruit of anger itself. It grows from the small seed to a big deadly tree.

Line 5: And I waterd it in fears, 

               It refers to plant. From this second stanza there are words like watered and sunned. Water and sun are two things a plant need the most. If we read until the end, we can conclude that the plant is a tree. This tree is a metaphor for anger. It’s small, because it’s created from the seed.

               Watered is one of the tree’s main supplies. Without it, tree will die. In this line, the persona keeps his anger by supplying the fears and tears. This is the reason why the tree keeps growing, because he takes care of it.

Line 6: Night & morning with my tears

               Night and morning symbolizes that he keeps it in every time of his life. The anger has controlled him and left no empty space.

               Tears symbolize his silent pain. Usually when people cry, they do not make sound but their tears keep flowing down. He watered the tree with tears instead of water, because tears are like the water of sadness. Combined with fears, these two things have been threatening him and become the source of his anger more and more.

Line 3: And I sunned it with smiles,

               Sun is also the aspect of tree’s life. It needs sun to digest the food and bear fruit. Sunned means burned as well. It can burn you and cause some disease, but usually we don’t realize it, we only think that it’s warm, but there are always risks behind it, like the ultraviolet ray. It’s the same with the persona action. Something that looks safe and pleasant, but harmful.

               Smiles here mean fake smiles. He adds fake smile to create the trap.

Line 8: And with soft deceitful wiles.

               Soft here represents something almost uncaught. The deceive tricks that he uses for the traps, one package with fake smiles, is in a soft way, because he doesn’t want his enemy to run away frightened. The main purpose is to trap. This creates illusion of friendliness.

Line 9: And it grew both day and night.

               Day and night here mean on and on. There’s no pause or stop in this process of growing wrath. It shows how addicted the persona to his own wrath is.

Line 10: Till it bore an apple bright.   

               Apple is the metaphor for irresistible temptation. It’s the fruit of wrath. When the tree is well-maintained and grows up, it bears good fruit. However that tree is a poison tree, so the fruit becomes poisonous fruit as well. Nobody knows that it’s poisonous except the gardener himself. The fruit is poisonous inside, but looks delicious outside. That’s why we call it terrible yet tempting. So from the wrath of the persona, he creates temptation for his foe.

               Bright symbolizes something precious and valuable. A shiny thing always tempts people’s curiosity. It explains that the wrath of the persona has been packed as if it’s good and pleasant thing to trap the foe.

Line 11: And my foe beheld it shine.

               Shine symbolize the foe; his eyes can be shiny to see the tempting apple. It makes him want to try it. Moreover, he knows that it is belonged to the persona. It makes him is even more tempted to steal it. From here it can be concluded that this foe, can be the persona’s foe, because he ever took something belongs to the persona.

Line 13: And into my garden stole,

               My garden is the metaphor of the persona’s area. It’s like his life, where there are many kinds of trees. It can be the good ones and the poisonous one. When this foe enters his garden, it means he annoys his life, again, but now the foe does it by purpose, to steal the beautifully-packaged wrath.

               Stole means that the foe comes secretly to the garden, when night and nobody sees it. This emphasizes that the foe deserve the blame, because he is stealing. The culpability has been created by the persona himself. He is the one who has laid snares for his foe and is responsible for it.

Line 14: When the night had veild the pole

               Pole can be defined as Pole Star, is the navigation light for the sailor. It means instruction or guidance.

               Night is the metaphor for darkness. Here darkness can mean bad intention or evil thought or passion. It’s exactly match with foe’s action in stealing the apple. He did it when the night which like fog, had veiled the pole, which means when the bad darkness covers the good indications. It strengthens the temptation and makes the foe get the chance to steal the apple.

Line 15: In the morning glad I see;         

               Morning symbolizes new day and new hope. Here the persona gets his hope, to see that his trap was working. Morning also is a metaphor for something bright and clear. It means that the persona can see the ‘death’ of his for clearly.

              
Line 16: My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

               Outstretched means die. Here die doesn’t mean that the foe is really dead physically. But it’s the metaphor of dying psychologically. Like what has been analyzed before, that the tree and apple are creations which are created by the persona but not in his reality world. It seems like happening in mind. From this creation in mind, the persona does the real action and can be concluded that it refers to a real trap for the foe, the trap to kill him psychologically, and the persona is succeed.

              Beneath means lose. When we are fighting, finally the loser is under the winner. Here the foe is described that he is lying under the tree, which shows that he has lost against the growing wrath.

3.1.2        Contradiction

The first is in the first stanza, between 1^st, 2^nd line with 3^rd, 4^th line.

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

When the persona angry with his friend, he will tell his friend and everything will be clear and okay. They will find the solution for the problem and the wrath ends. But here he puts the difference action toward his foe. He doesn’t tell what annoy him, and he lets the wrath grows. It seems like if he tells the foe, the foe may react badly, and cause something which is not good for the persona. There’s contradiction in his action and feeling.

The second is in the second stanza, 1^st, 2^nd line with 3^rd, 4^th line.

And I waterd it in fears,               
Night & morning with my tears:

And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

              Both of these actions supply the tree’s needs. The persona takes care of the tree by giving what it needs to grow and bear fruits. But as the contradiction, first he gives fears and tears which unpleasant, but he also gives smiles and wiles which is packaged into pleasant things. Fears and tears are not shown to the foe, but smiles and wiles are shown.

3.1.3        Paradox

·         Poison and Tree

A poison tree is a paradox because poison means something dangerous and can be harmful, which leads into death. Contradictorily, tree represents life, because it produces oxygen that brings life for humanity. This contradicts each other, because tree is supposed to give life to human, not to bear such a poisonous fruit that can end life.

3.2    Textual Stage

          The disunity of this poem can be found in the first stanza, which tells us about the seed of the tree. It tells about the process from where the tree is beginning to grow. The second stanza is about the maintenance of the tree. It tells us the process in maintaining, by giving water and sun supplies. The third is about the growth of the tree, which shows that the tree is growing and bearing such a tempting fruit, and how the foe is tempted. The forth is about the effect of the tree, which tells us that the foe steals the fruit and gets poisoned and die.

          It can be seen from the point of view also. In the first stanza the persona can be seen as a human like usual. But in the second, third, and forth he can be seen as a gardener. The gardener itself is also a metaphor for the persona who creates the garden and takes care of the tree.

3.3    Linguistic Stage

          From the analysis of metaphor, paradox, and contradictions in this poem, it’s revealed that anger can’t be kept and maintained. It should vanish as quick as possible. It has to be clear between two parties because if people keep it, it will grow like a tree and bear poisonous fruit. Therefore, the theme of this story is “Suppressed wrath can harm the life”.

The surface meaning of this poem is about someone who felt anger at his enemy, but he didn’t talk about it and let it grows in his heart and mind.

          However, I believe, the deeper meaning is the lack of self control in humanity. It’s like the temptation which happened in Bible story when Adam and Eve were tempted to eat from the Tree of Good and Bad Knowledge. It happened because they didn’t have self control for themselves. It’s also happened to people who suffer the wrath. They didn’t have self control to manage their emotions toward people, and to talk and find solution about it, also self control for not letting the wrath grows, because all of them will create a very bad effect for people.

IV

CONCLUSION

        This paper is about the application of deconstruction theory in a poem entitled A Poison Tree by William Blake. The writer analyzes it in three stages, which contains verbal stage, textual stage, and linguistic stage. From the verbal stage, there are many metaphors are used in this poem; each represents many things about wrath. The writer also finds some paradox and contradiction lines.

        The disunity can be found among the first, second, third, and four stanzas which have different process of the tree which is used as metaphor to symbolize anger. The theme of this poem is “Suppressed wrath can harm the life”. The deeper meaning is the lack of self control in humanity.

APPENDIX

A Poison Tree

~William Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,                    5
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.                              10
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;                              15
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.