Virtue, Dignity, and Kindness Theme Analysis

While it’s possible to construe Cosimo’s choice to live in the trees as a fundamentally selfish one—and indeed, Baron Arminio does just this for a long time—it’s also impossible to ignore that Cosimo dedicates his life to making his community and the world a better place, whether by creating brigades to fight fires or by expanding on philosophers’ ideas of how to form just, ethical governments. In many ways, Cosimo exhibits a spirit of generosity and goodwill unheard of in his life as a noble confined to the ground, and he sets an example of how to be a useful, generous, and moral contributor to society.

As a child, Cosimo is understandably selfish. He wants to be free to do as he pleases, whether that be playing silly games (which the Generalessa forbids) or eating meals at a separate table (which Baron Arminio puts a stop to not long before Biagio begins his story). However selfish Cosimo is, the novel makes it clear that his selfishness is a product of misguided attempts to control him on the part of adults in his life, not something actually wrong with Cosimo himself. After Cosimo resolves himself to living in the trees, much of his young life is spent running wild and learning about the world around him. But this time Cosimo spends learning and bettering himself leads directly to his development of a moral compass—and, as a young adult, his understanding of how important it is to use his skills, station, and location to help others. To this end, Cosimo begins to dedicate himself early on to helping farmers prune their trees, something he can do easily from his perch and something that, incidentally, helps him in the long run (he effectively trains the trees to grow in such a way as to facilitate his passage among them, especially in his old age). Through this, the novel begins to suggest that kindness and virtue are innate states of being for Cosimo, at least when he doesn’t have to field annoying pressure from his parents. It also suggests that giving back to others has direct, tangible, and positive effects for the one giving that are just as meaningful as the positive effects for those on the receiving end.

Over the next several decades, Cosimo acts on his desire to give back again and again. He develops a fire brigade to protect the dry forest from arsonists and neighboring fires one summer, and during the few years he spends with exiled Spanish nobles who also inhabit the treetops, he helps them draft letters and petitions to King Carlos III explaining why they should be allowed to return to their homes. Even more compelling than the way that Cosimo can mobilize groups of people in pursuit of a common goal, however, is the way that he is able to bestow a sense of dignity and humanity upon people whom society has, for the most part, discredited or left behind. These include the cavalier avvocato (Cosimo’s uncle) and Gian dei Brughi, a terrifying bandit who develops a voracious appetite for books in his old age.

The cavalier avvocato is Baron Arminio’s illegitimate brother and so is the black sheep of the family to begin with. This sense of being different and unwelcome is heightened by the fact that the cavalier avvocato spent much of his youth in Turkey. During his time in the trees, Cosimo learns that his uncle isn’t just the weird eccentric everyone thinks he is. In reality, the cavalier avvocato is a kind, private man who keeps bees and has a talent for designing and developing canal and aqueduct systems—and who feels stifled and mistreated by his brother. Though Cosimo learns later that the cavalier avvocato is actually helping Turkish pirates smuggle goods out of the city, Cosimo weighs his options and decides to tell a story that allows his uncle to, in the public mind, die a dignified death by spreading the lie that the pirates captured and killed him, rather than that he died in the middle of a traitorous act. The novel proposes that this is one of the most generous things Cosimo could’ve done for his unhappy and misunderstood uncle—and also commends Cosimo’s choice to alert the homeless charcoal burners who live in the woods to the existence of the loot, so that the foodstuffs go to the individuals in Cosimo’s community who truly need it the most.

Gian dei Brughi, on the other hand, begins borrowing Cosimo’s books in the year before dei Brughi’s capture and execution. While their relationship in general functions to humanize the bandit and turn him into a sympathetic, human character, what stands out is Cosimo’s choice to read to dei Brughi during his time in jail and then tell him the ending of the book in the moment before he dies. This allows dei Brughi to die happy, something that the novel suggests is worth striving for—no matter what wrongdoings or mistakes an individual may have made in their life. In this sense, Cosimo’s relationships with his uncle, Gian dei Brughi, and other similar characters speak to the power of humanizing individuals one might initially think aren’t worth considering at all. Cosimo’s kindnesses, however, make it clear that everyone, no matter how misunderstood, is worthy of happiness, respect, and dignity, especially as they face death.

As Cosimo grows old and his health begins to fail, he begins to trade his role of the generous giver with others in the community. The community at large comes together to pay back the respect and kindness that Cosimo showed them by sending a nurse, doctors, and food into his trees, in addition to a mattress and an armchair. This, Biagio insists, is barely enough to thank his brother for his lifelong generosity. Choosing to record Cosimo’s story in this novel, however, is a way for Biagio to make sure that Cosimo’s legacy as a kind, giving, and generous individual far outlives him—and allows him to continue to set an example for others for years to come.