The Pain Tree Olive Senior Analysis

The most fantastic aspect of the human mind is its ability to retain memories, but it comes at a cost. Humans are blessed everyday with the warmth, joy, and nostalgia of pleasant memories and cursed with regret and shame from the upsetting ones. Humans’ inability to cope with the ramifications of these memories often lead them down a destructive path of correcting past wrongs. Olive Senior’s “The Pain Tree” handles the theme of coping with the past through the protagonist, Lorraine, who in a building fit of rage tries to rewrite history. In “The Pain Tree,” Senior uses the destruction scene of Larissa’s room to show that the actions of the present can only change the perception one’s perception of a memory and not the effects of the memory itself. The feelings that Lorraine associates with the memory of not saying goodbye to Larissa are a …show more content…
Unsurprisingly, once she rips the room to shreds, she still feels the core emotion she felt before: shame (Senior 315). If anything, she now feels worse for her deeds because she has destroyed the memory of Larissa and the women who preceded her. Senior shows her thought process when she says, “I thought I was taking possession, but the room had already been condemned” (Senior 315). Lorraine believed that she could control the effect these women have on the young girls’ lives, but this is already set in stone from the beginning. At some point, there will be permanent separation between the girl and the woman who raised her. The last moment between the two will inevitably be impactful and devastating and the effect of this moment will always exist and be at some point be felt by both parties. But it is up to the individual (Larissa) when the effect will be recognized and for her, it isn’t until she destroys the room and can finally come to