Humans and Nature Theme Analysis

The presence and the actions of Forest—the increasingly dark and malevolent forest surrounding Village—initially suggests that Matty's journey through Forest can be read as a simple conflict of man versus nature. However, as Matty lies dying in Forest and receives Leader's message to use his gift of healing, he discovers that Forest isn't simply bloodthirsty for no reason or for its own selfish reasons. Instead, the dangers posed by Forest to humans are exactly those that the humans in Village pose to themselves. With this, Lowry positions the natural world of the novel as a mirror for the darkest parts of human nature itself.

The residents of Village have a long and fraught history with Forest. Forest is known for "warning" (creating a minor injury) and then "entangling" (strangling, poisoning, stabbing, and ultimately killing people with vegetation) those it no longer wants to travel through it. By turning Forest and the natural world more broadly into a sentient being that's fundamentally violent, Lowry crafts a world where people appear to be rightfully terrified of an entity that seems unknowable and impossible to appease. Notably, with this understanding, characters believe that Forest is something separate and different from themselves, rather than a reflection of them and their society. In other words, the same fear, selfishness, and cruelty that grows in Village is somehow magically manifested in Forest, and people's fear of Forest keeps them from recognizing or accepting their own connection to these changes. The fact that this connection isn't immediately obvious to the characters in the novel speaks to the way that their fear of change and difference is extremely isolating. This in turn mirrors the way that the villagers begin to speak about outsiders with fear and scorn. While once, all people in Village saw refugees as important and valuable to their society, in the novel's present, the villagers' selfishness leads them to see refugees (who, Matty notes, are no different now than they were in the past) as dangerous and unwanted.

Matty begins to suspect that the human world of Village and the natural world of Forest are connected when he first embarks on his journey to fetch Kira from her village so she can return with him to live with her father, Seer. When Matty leaves, Ramon and his little sister have been quarantined by Herbalist for fear that whatever ails them will infect others in Village, while Mentor and his group have begun gathering logs to build a wall around Village. At this point, Matty believes that the "thickening" happening in Forest is something separate and distinct from what's going on in Village. What Matty sees, however, is that Forest is suffering just like his friend and his neighbors. In addition to becoming increasingly violent and dangerous, Forest begins to smell of rot and decay—changes that mirror Mentor's shift to become suspicious of outsiders, as well as Ramon's physical illness.

Though it takes Matty until the end of the novel and the end of his life to realize it, this suggests that Forest isn't actually the one at fault here—it's the humans, as they don't understand that their actions and beliefs have consequences in the wider world beyond Village. Treating Forest (and, for that matter, other people) with respect and reverence, as Matty does, is the only way to safely and effectively exist in the world—though, as Matty and Kira grow sicker and acquire more injuries on their journey back, the novel suggests that there are times when even this isn't enough.

The fact that Matty can heal Forest (rather than simply changing people's thinking or striking down the vote to ban outsiders, for example) and, by extension, Village, reinforces the novel's assertion that the prejudice and selfishness that plague people like Mentor is an illness like any other, though one that only becomes obvious to Matty when he learns to see Forest as "a tangled knot of fears and deceits and dark struggles for power that had disguised itself and almost destroyed everything." Essentially, the issue isn't Forest; it's the "illness" that infects Village and, through the mysterious connection between Forest and Village, infects Forest in just the same way. With this, the novel suggests that kindness as well as cruelty aren't issues that affect just humans or indeed, just the group of people who feel a certain way—one's thoughts, beliefs, and actions have far-reaching consequences in the world, and should be developed with caution.