The Man Who Planted Trees

The circumstances surrounding Giono’s writing of “The Man Who Planted Trees” and the author’s life leading up to that point are crucial to analyzing the story. Like the narrator, Giono served in the French Army during World War I, fighting amid the incomprehensible destruction and suffering of the Battle of Verdun. The experience was so horrific for him that he became a lifelong pacifist, refusing to fight in World War II at great personal cost. Thus, when the narrator almost casually references the war and Verdun specifically, the reader can infer that the character carries enormous trauma, even if he never explicitly addresses it. The author’s wartime experiences also invest the story with poignant allegorical resonance, as Bouffier’s reforestation efforts represent the construction of a better world built from the ashes of postwar Europe—one that is capable of healing the personal and collective trauma of an entire generation.

The focus on Verdon is doubly significant because of the extensive environmental destruction inflicted on that region, especially during World War I. Chemical and aerial warfare poisoned the earth and decimated life to such an extent that swaths of land were declared uninhabitable. Some areas are still contaminated by heavy metals and undetonated explosives.