When We Cease to Understand the World

Chapter 5 is a six-part narrative largely recounted by an unnamed narrator in the first person. The first section is a dream-like description of a “vegetable plague” that grows inside tree roots. The narrator describes it as “an ancient, crawling evil” (175), and warns that the trees and the disease they harbor should be consumed by fire or the plague will destroy the world. The chapter ends with an encouragement to the reader to listen for this disease growing under the earth.

Part 2 is recounted in the first person by an unnamed narrator. One night he is out walking the dog when he comes upon a man gardening. He asks the man why he is gardening at night, and the man explains that the plants sleep at night and therefore they don’t feel being moved as much. The man tells the narrator about a giant rotting tree that threatens to crush his house and says he can’t bring himself to take it down because bats, hummingbirds, and a parasitic red flowering plant live in its trunk. He says his grandmother used to cut the plant back only for it to return stronger than ever. Then the man tells the narrator that when he was around five or six, his grandmother hanged herself from the tree.