A Poison Tree deals with a key human emotion - anger. The poem’s content, ideas, language and structure are explored. Comparisons and alternative interpretations are also considered.
A Poison Tree is a short and deceptively simple poem about repressing anger and the consequenceThe things that follow on from an action. of doing so. The speaker tells of how they fail to communicate their wrathAnother word for anger. It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. to their foeAnother word for an enemy. and how this continues to grow until it develops into poisonous hatred.
The speaker describes how when they were angry with a friend, they talked to their friend about the issue which helped them to overcome their anger. However, the speaker was unable to do the same with an enemy and this leads to developing resentment and an even stronger degree of hatred. An extended metaphorA metaphor (where one thing is represented by another - eg hope as a seed) that is developed or recurs throughout a text. of a tree growing in the speaker's garden demonstrates how the anger continues to grow. In the lines 'And I water'd it in fears' and 'And I sunned it with smiles' the speaker actively cultivates the tree/anger.
Eventually the anger blossoms into a poisoned fruit, the enemy eats the fruit and dies and the speaker seems to be glad of this. However, there is also a sense that they see the destructiveness of what has occurred. As the first lines acknowledge, we can easily overcome our anger if we communicate it properly.