The Orchard Keeper

Animals are an important part of the landscape in rural Tennessee. Descriptions of the mountains reference the “whistling wings” of doves and the “calls and yaps” of dogs in the nighttime (49). The sounds, sights, and smells of animals are part of the sensory reality of life in the mountains, where everything exists in a balance. The animal world is brutal but natural, providing a harmony to existence that human interference disrupts. The violence of the animals and the beauty of their descriptions echo this balance: The beauty exists as a counterweight to the violence. Men like Arthur understand this balance, but the government and the modern world do not. When Legwater shoots Scout for no reason, he brings about an end to the balanced order of the natural world. Everything after that fades away.

Human interactions with animals are also symbolic. Key to this is John, who spends much of the novel trying to trap animals to retrieve bounties from the government offices or to sell their skins for money. He invests in traps without really knowing how to use them, as he lacks someone to teach him about the animal world. John’s empty traps symbolize his lack of attunement to the world around him and the lack of balance in his life, as caused by the absence of a father figure. Only when he meets Marion and Warn is he able to better understand animals and—by extension—better understand himself. By trapping animals, he exerts his dominion over them, restricting their freedom and killing them for his own personal profit. Rather than framing this as a moral failing, however, the novel implies that humans hunting animals is part of the same violent, balanced order as animals hunting other animals. By the end of the novel, John rejects this natural order. He returns to the government office and tries to give back the bounty he won for his first hawk, symbolically trying to undo the violence he has done. He rejects his bond with animals, as he seemingly rejects his bond with society itself.

John’s change of mind stems in part from the imprisonment of Marion and Arthur, the two most prominent male figures in his life. John sees their captivity and cannot help but draw parallels with his own actions as a trapper. Marion and Arthur, he realizes, are no different from the animals who were caught in his cages. They may be guilty, they may be violent, but freedom—John decides—should never be restricted. He leaves the town, exercising his own right to freedom, and only returns once the town has been abandoned. The outside world is a brutal and violent place, as evidenced by the owl that attacks the panther, but there is an order and a balance to this cycle of violence that the restriction of freedom disrupts. John comes to understand humans as he understands animals, as creatures that deserve to be free and unencumbered by the impositions of the social order. Violence is natural, as is the animal world, and John would rather surrender himself to this world than rob anyone or anything of their freedom ever again.