The Overstory Themes

At its heart, Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory is about the relationship between humans and trees. The book follows nine central characters from different walks of life who are eventually drawn together through their individual connections to trees. Olivia Vandergriff, Nick Hoel, Adam Appich, Mimi Ma, and Douglas Pavlicek become activists defending forests from logging; Patricia Westerford writes books about how trees communicate with each other; Neelay Mehta is inspired by…

An important aspect of The Overstory is that it decentralizes humanity as the assumed protagonist of life on Earth—that is, the novel makes people step back and recognize that there are other beings living alongside us, with their own valuable and interesting experiences. The Overstory most notably does this by questioning different notions of time. Overall, Powers uses the book’s style and plot to disrupt the usual human perception of time, instead challenging his readers…

The Overstory dives into the psychology of human beings as a species in order to explain their destructive impulses. Primarily, the novel questions how humanity can grow to recognize the life-or-death matter of saving the trees considering what has proven again and again to be inherent to human nature: the unstoppable desire to “grow harder; grow faster.” The Overstory acknowledges the many flaws in human nature and psychology—the need for always “a little bit more,”…

While The Overstory attempts to base its sense of time on the concentric growth of rings on a tree, it also structures its story around the endless branching and complexity of a tree’s limbs and roots. There are nine main characters, each with their own storylines, yet all are inextricably connected. This then gestures towards a paradox at the heart of the book, and of trees themselves: how beings can be both complex and ever-dividing…

The Overstory seeks to question human assumptions about basic things like consciousness, value, and meaning. If people were able to step outside of our limited selves, the novel suggests, we could take a larger view of these concepts and grow wiser in the process, recognizing that we are not the only conscious beings in the universe and that ideas of meaning and value might mean different things to different species (most notably to trees).

The…