Sees Behind Trees

The opening of Sees Behind Trees sets the reader up to expect that Sees Behind Trees’s main obstacle will be his eyesight. By centering the first chapter on Sees Behind Trees’s fears of embarrassment and failure, the narrative frames his development around accepting his disability. However, Dorris quickly resolves this conflict with the change in Sees Behind Trees’s training and his success in the coming-of-age test. By the end of Chapter 2, the obstacle changes from a fear of failure to a growing hubris, or overconfidence, in Sees Behind Trees’s abilities. This narrative structure matches the nonlinear or partially linear structures of many Indigenous American stories, which are often created from multiple shorter stories and stories with no definite ending. Sees Behind Trees overcoming the perceived obstacle of his eyesight is one smaller story within the overarching narrative of his development into a young man, while overcoming his hubris is another.

The narrative misdirection also reinforces the novel’s overarching message about disability by underscoring that Walnut’s limited vision is not a problem in and of itself. To the extent that it is a source of conflict, it is because it raises questions about whether his community will accept him and whether he will accept himself. When his mother tells him he will not eat until he shoots the moss, he gives the reader a glimpse into his training up until that point, saying, “We had faced this matter of what I couldn’t see many times before […] but it had never before been such serious business” (2-3). Walnut’s implication is that his mother has been trying to train him to see better for a long time but that her efforts have always been in vain. Though well-intentioned, the effect is to suggest that Walnut must “earn” social acceptance (symbolized by food) by being like everyone else. Conversely, when his mother “gives up” and feeds him, it reassures him that there is a place for him regardless of his ability to see, but it also undercuts his sense of agency by seemingly suggesting that if Walnut cannot do what others do, then he cannot do anything. The change in training marks a paradigm shift, as it allows Walnut to succeed on his own terms, thus introducing the theme of The Importance of Embracing People with Disabilities.

Much like his training becoming more intense as he approaches adulthood, Sees Behind Trees expects other adults to treat him more seriously, as well. When his father sits on him as a joke, he wonders, “Why was he being so playful, as if I were still a very little boy?” (8). Sees Behind Trees’s emphasis on seriousness begins to develop the theme of Maturity Achieved Through Responsibility and Empathy since he mistakenly associates maturity with solemnity. Sees Behind Trees is trying to develop an adult personality, and he associates his father’s playfulness with his own youth rather than understanding that his father can still be playful as an adult.

When Sees Behind Trees tries to help Diver, the limits of his newfound ability become apparent. When she initially asks him to find the needle, he imagines the needle and then “[throws] the needle out into the forest and trie[s] to watch where it land[s]” (16). In doing so, however, he finds that the needles “disappear[s].” Sees Behind Trees’s skill is not magical, so he cannot simply imagine the needle and divine where it went. However, this leads to the discovery of a second talent: his ability to reason his way through a problem. When Sees Behind Trees figures out the needle’s location, it is by imagining what happened in the moment the needle was lost, though he phrases this discovery by saying: “I saw Diver’s hand reach quickly for her dress” (19). Sees Behind Trees’s figurative ability to “see” what others can’t by listening to sounds thus comes to symbolize a still more abstract kind of “seeing”: that of insight.

The obstacle presented by Diver’s reaction, as she runs away to tell everyone about Sees Behind Trees’s ability, is the perception that his talent is supernatural. Sees Behind Trees notes how “everyone believe[s] [he] could live up to [his] name” (20), meaning people think he can use psychic abilities to find hidden objects. For those who are accustomed to only looking with their eyes, rather than their ears and minds, Sees Behind Trees’s actions seem like magic, and the section ends with Sees Behind Trees noting: “The truly bad thing was, I began to believe it, too” (20). Sees Behind Trees is foreshadowing his own hubris since his abilities are not as strong as people assume.