MOVE 1 – Percival Everett’s The Trees
I will be analyzing Percival Everett’s novel, The Trees, to explore what I have learned this semester and how it has impacted my thoughts and ideas on both life and literature. Throughout this piece, I will connect course concepts to the themes established in Everett’s novel. One of the main course concepts that I will circle back to is the idea of literal and figurative repetition. The literal repetition found in The Trees would be the repetition of the method behind each of the murders described in the novel. The murders consisted of barbed wire wrapped tightly around the neck, brutal beating of the body, mutilation of the testicles, a gun shot to the head, and a dead Black man accompanying each murder scene. Each murder was gone about in an almost identical way to bring attention to the greater atrocities that went unnoticed in America for decades. Everett’s mysterious character, Mamma Z, tracked every lynching in the United States since she was born in 1913, totaling up to an inconceivable 7,006 lynchings of 7,006 individual Black Americans. This horrific redundancy of 7,006 unjust lynchings exposes America for its rooted history of violence and racism, which brings about the figurative repetition that I mentioned before.
An integral concept revisited throughout the semester is the idea of straddling the line between what is right and wrong. In Everett’s novel, detectives Ed, Jim, and Herberta straddle the line of morality as they investigate and uncover the truth about the killings in Money, Mississippi. The detectives have a duty to the government to arrest those who disobey the law. In The Trees’ case, the detectives have an obligation to put away those involved in the killings of White Americans. However, the detectives also have an internal responsibility as Black Americans to defend their fellow Black Americans. In the novel, Jim found out that Gertrude was involved in the killings of racist White men in Mississippi whose ancestors were involved in lynchings. Although Jim had an obligation to his job to arrest Gertrude, he instead brought her back to Mamma Z’s house to continue to uncover the mysteries of the unsolved murders. These moral, internal conflicts and outlooks on justice serve as the causes of many difficult decisions that Ed, Jim, and Herberta had to make throughout the novel.
MOVE 2 – Lucille Clifton’s surely I am able to write poems
I have chosen to analyze and explore the following epigraph in relation to my reading of The Trees, by Percival Everett:
“surely i am able to write poems
celebrating grass and how the blue
in the sky can flow green or red
and the waters lean against the
chesapeake shore like a familiar
poems about nature and landscape
surely but whenever I begin
“the trees wave their knotted branches
and…” why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?”
-Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton’s poem, surely I am able to write poems, interested me because Clifton’s attention is brutally interrupted as if she is too distracted by something to finish a line, a thought, or an idea. For example, “and the waters lean against the / chesapeake shore like a familiar / poems about nature and landscape” (lines 4-6). In the first two lines, Clifton is about to compare the waters of the Chesapeake shore to something similar until she is suddenly transfixed on other poems about nature. Clifton’s train of thought is interrupted in another instance where she writes, “surely but whenever I begin” (line 7). This white space signifies to me that Clifton is unable to maintain focus on her thoughts because she appears to be too busy thinking about “an other poem” (line 11). I wonder if Clifton is working to emphasize how many poems sound the same or have the same idea hidden within them. This reminds me of the brutal, discouraging fact that although every lynching is different because it involves distinct individuals with unique lives, passions, and backgrounds, each murder is blended together with another within the word “lynching”. Although the word “lynch” has a distinct meaning (an extrajudicial killing by a group), there are a multitude of different aspects to consider when distinguishing one lynching from another. One has to take into consideration who is performing the lynching, who is being lynched, who is affected by the lynching, how the lynching is performed, and a myriad of additional aspects. I believe Clifton is emphasizing the sad reality that although poems can be written by authors in their own way, they will forever be grouped together with other poems coinciding with the same theme, idea, or memory, no matter how unique the author attempts to create it.
A strong message ingrained in The Trees is the power of names. Damon Thruff, an intellectual writer, is tasked with going through all 7,006 lynchings that Mamma Z has recorded, and writes a book with a new perspective: outrage. When Mamma Z and Damon Thruff first met, Mamma Z was surprised that Damon was able to “construct three hundred and seven pages on such a topic [racial violence] without an ounce of outrage” (Everett, page 152). From the start, Mamma Z challenged Damon to write about racial violence in a meaningful and passionate way. Mamma Z taught Damon how the unknown names are more of a name than those who were able to be named because, “a little more than life was taken from them” (Everett, page 215). This powerful message of the novel emphasizes the fact that life was not the only thing taken from the lynched men and women. To be unnamed means to be forgotten, and Mamma Z and Damon are trying their very best to remember the men and women so wrongfully and brutally expelled from life. By the end of the novel, Damon became captivated in his new devotion as he worked on his book with complete focus on avenging all of the Black Americans who were unjustly lynched in America.
MOVE 3 – Classroom Ideas and Concepts
Dr. McCoy emphasized the importance of “attending to how things are framed and packaged” (class notes, 2/28) in writing pieces. Therefore I will unpack how The Trees was framed by Percival Everett. Firstly, the novel’s main setting was in Money, Mississippi where Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old Black boy who was kidnapped, tortured, and lynched by White men who accused Emmett of offending a White woman. This White woman, Carolyn Bryant, is depicted in The Trees as Granny C, an old lady who “always looked a little sad” (Everett, page 6). We find out later that she feels this way because she is constantly reflecting on the horror she set in motion in 1955: accusing Emmett Till of offending her. In the novel, Granny C died from the shock of looking at the disfigured, lifeless body of a Black man that was fixed in her room. From her perspective, a quick glimpse of this dead Black man instantly reminded her of Emmett Till, and she too became lifeless. In fact, the entire town, including the detectives, was afraid that the ghost of Emmett Till was taking his revenge on the racists that ended his life.
Throughout the semester, the class has been returning to the theme of sustainability. Firstly, we examined this concept literally by exploring a heating plant and studying the triad of ways to maintain sustainability: social, environmental, and economic. Secondly, in a small group discussion, my classmate pondered the idea of the sustainability and unsustainability of race depicted in Everett’s novel. It is apparent that Everett is portraying the visceral need for White Americans to sustain their race by eliminating that of the Black race by any means possible. It can also be argued that Black Americans are working to sustain their race by defending themselves against the racists that poison America. This battle of the sustainability of race is deeply fixed in America’s history and Everett illustrates this battle by creating a fictional, yet realistic world of “what if’s”.
MOVE 4 – Perspectives Gained
One key takeaway from this class and especially from Everett’s novel is that a reader must always respect an author’s artistic vision. My peers and I questioned the frequent use of the n-word in Everett’s novel, as we felt that it was thrown around with an empty meaning throughout the novel. We learned that Everett is working to characterize the many racist White characters in his novel. It is hard for us students in Geneseo, New York to believe that there are so many people who continually use the n-word in their dialect, especially in 2022. However, the fact is that Everett is emphasizing that not only is the problem of racism and violence still present in 2022 America, but in some places it is expanding inexplicably.
My peers and I also questioned Everett’s endgame with his novel. Was it Everett’s artistic choice to create the novel in such a confusing and overwhelming way? What is the purpose of Everett ending the novel in the way that he did? In the end, America has mobs of vengeful Black and Asian Americans storming the streets and attacking racist White Americans. I believe this ending makes readers think about the “what if?”. What if all of those unjustly treated rise up? What if all of those misrepresented rise up? What if all of those discriminated against rise up? What if all of those who lost family members to racism rise up? The amount of people who would rise up would be immense, and America may not be able to redeem itself for the horrors of its history. Another possible purpose of Everett’s novel’s ending would be Damon Thruff. Damon is still typing profusely by the end of the novel and does not even notice the detectives who have walked into Mamma Z’s house. Perhaps the reason Damon is continually typing is to signify that the killings may never stop and for that reason, Damon will never stop typing the names of those lost.
MOVE 5 – So What?
From both Lucille Clifton’s poem, surely I am able to write poems, and Percival Everett’s novel, The Trees, I am learning to apply these lessons in real life. A concept that I am battling with after taking Dr. McCoy’s class and after reading The Trees is the distinction between good faith and bad faith. Good faith relies on persuasion to convince someone to agree with you whereas bad faith relies on intimidation or coercion to convince someone to agree with you. Throughout the book, the reader is faced with the question “is murder justice?”. It is difficult to answer this question as a White American because I have never experienced discrimination because of my race. Therefore, when I try to step into Gertrude’s shoes and determine if the killing of racist White men is justice or not, I find myself going back and forth between thinking this murder is right and wrong. On one hand, the brutal mutilation and murder of these men is a gruesome way to ultimately rid the world of inherently bad people. However, on the other hand, it is always wrong to kill another human being, no matter how horrible of a person they are. In terms of good faith and bad faith, it is difficult to understand if Gertrude recruited Damon Thruff to write about and publish the 7,006 lynchings because of respect or revenge. It is also important to recognize that many of the overarching problems discussed in The Trees remain unsolved today, just as many of the mysteries in the novel remain unsolved for the reader. The reader gets a taste of how frustrating it is to read through a whole book and only have some questions answered. For many Black and Asian Americans, they have to go through an entire lifetime of frustration because their country refuses to accept the problem at hand and work to solve it or take responsibility for it. Overall, I learned a lot about perspective, injustice, and the distinction between right and wrong from my time with Dr. McCoy and Everett’s novel The Trees.