The Stories Trees Tell: Jad El Hage’s The Myrtle Tree and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the representation of trees in Jad El Hage’s The Myrtle Tree (2007) and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (2013). Due to growing concerns over global environmental crises, these writers have showed significant attention to nature by using trees as symbols to comment on political, social, and cultural issues. Through a close reading of these texts, this study analyses the multifaceted meanings of trees from a postcolonial ecocritical angle. It argues that trees in these novels carry symbolic meanings and provide a valuable understanding of culture, resistance, and violence in the texts. Trees represent an essential part in in both characters’ lives and narratives’ structure and remain powerful icons to decipher thematic significations and understand metaphors. Further, it demonstrates how these writers enlarge their scope of writing, by adding postcolonial and environmental dimensions to the cultural, political, and historical issues they depict. Keywords: Trees, Postcolonial Ecocriticism, Culture, Resistance, Violence.