Analysis Of The Tree By Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia wright a poem that holds a quiet beauty in its tale of an infant ( child’s ) death. The first person narrative is not abused by melodramatic, theatrical emotion as it instead by focusing on the sequoia planted in the child`s memory, and its significance to the narrator`s family, ( the tree is builder as a memory to the sin that had no space in this word, and didn not service the birth) . Therefore the poem nightlight the effect of their terrible loss and suffering regarding to that . The elegiac tone never slips into total hopelessness, and how time unfolds with the tree never suffering, but living long into the future mirrors how there is always a way for the dead to live on. The tree is there and as it’s exists it illustrates the memory that will always remain in the heart of the The sequoia is planted to survive longer than any human, through generations of the baby`s family, almost to …show more content…
The shoot is planted with a gentleness, and care that seems excessive for something with no sentimental value, "laying you into it, carefully packing the soil" as though they have respect or even love for the tree. The family coming together within the descri ption almost creates the image of a burial: "All afternoon my brothers and I have worked in the orchard, / Digging this hole", ( keeping their hopes up) reflecting how they seem to be there to support one another as though something has been lost, although the reader in unsure of what until the third stanza. The structure of the poem creates an ambiguity around the meaning of the planting of the sequoia. It begins in the present tense, with the tree being planted, which is not made explicit, but deduced from the title, and there is a sense of darkness and sorrow within created by lexical choices such as "cold winds", "dull grey" and