Themes and Issues

Abstract

The theme of the vitality and richness of a life lived close to the earth and nature is very powerful. The message which life seems to have passed on to Laurie Lee is that human experience is as limitless as the earth’s produce, there to be enjoyed, constantly renewed with a perennial freshness. Cider with Rosie abounds in piled-up images of natural things. But there are many smaller, particular matters, which show how all-pervasive is the natural world. The very first picture of Laurie Lee sees him totally immersed in long grass — perhaps a symbolic image in itself! In no time his sisters are stuffing him full of berries — the natural bounty of the earth — as birds cram the ever-open mouths of their young. The garden becomes his first teacher, showing him its endless variety; here too he learns to cope with the decaying process, the natural law which says not only that all living things must die but that through death new life is created: rotting leaves feed the soil with goodness, a dead cat provides food for hosts of grubs. He discovers, too, the magical properties of the elements, especially water, with which one can do so many things: ‘confine or scatter, or send down holes’; ‘drink it, draw with it … fly it in bubbles’; but ‘never burn or break or destroy’. Such curiosity, such inquiring, takes him to the elemental heart of life itself.