45 pages • 1-hour read
Sees Behind Trees
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of ableism and death.
Hubris
A prominent motif in Sees Behind Trees is hubris, which is extreme pride, arrogance, or overconfidence. Hubris often involves characters challenging gods, fate, or authority figures, which usually leads to the character’s downfall. A classic example of hubris in Greek mythology is that of Icarus, who flies too close to the sun, causing his wax wings to melt and cast him into the sea. In Sees Behind Trees, there are three characters who struggle with hubris: Sees Behind Trees, Gray Fire, and Otter.
When Sees Behind Trees correctly locates Diver’s needle, she tells the community about Sees Behind Trees’s ability, and everyone concludes that he has mystical power. In retrospect, he laments this, adding, “I began to believe it, too” (20). Filled with self-importance, Sees Behind Trees challenges his parents by sleeping in, lashes out at Brings the Deer for playing a prank, and interrupts the weroance to ask for a task. These challenges to authority display Sees Behind Trees’s overconfidence, which he mistakenly associates with adulthood. Learning that overconfidence is not maturity constitutes a major part of his character arc, making the motif central to the theme of Maturity Achieved Through Responsibility and Empathy.
Gray Fire’s memory of the beautiful place contains a still-more explicit example of hubris. Gray Fire wanted to outrun “night,” meaning that he thought he could run faster than the sun could set. As a result, he stayed in the beautiful place longer than he should have, and his foot got stuck. He claims the “spirit” of the place “swallowed” his foot to punish his arrogance, and he ultimately had to cut off his toes to escape. Gray Fire’s story is a classic tale of hubris in that he challenged the natural order of things and ended up sacrificing something significant—his special ability—in his downfall.
Otter, unlike Gray Fire and Sees Behind Trees, does not challenge a specific authority. Instead, she was overconfident in her ability to manipulate Gray Fire. She orchestrated the trap that maimed Gray Fire, assuming that she would be able to save him before anything bad happened. Because of her miscalculation, she saved Gray Fire only after he had already cut off his toes, causing him to become forlorn and distant. Otter manipulated Gray Fire because she wanted to keep him and lost him in the process.
The Beautiful Place
The beautiful place is an area in the forest that Gray Fire describes as a land of water. It has trees, waterfalls, and a lake that stretches beyond Gray Fire’s sight. When he first arrived there, Gray Fire says, he felt fulfilled, asking Sees Behind Trees, “Where does a runner run when he has arrived at the only finish line he doesn’t want to cross?” (40). Because of its beauty, Gray Fire was mesmerized, and the beautiful place became his obsession. A similar pattern occurs when Sees Behind Trees enters the beautiful place, though the conclusion is different: Sees Behind Trees suddenly gains perfect vision, seeing all the individual rocks and trees like he has never seen them before and, for a moment, he is hypnotized like Gray Fire. Ultimately, however, he breaks out of the trance to find Gray Fire.
For both characters, the beautiful place is a symbol of total fulfillment, granting the desires of those who enter it. Through supernatural means, it underscores Gray Fire’s warning to Sees Behind Trees that no one thing should ever be too important. For Sees Behind Trees, the beautiful place does not offer meaningful fulfillment even though his greatest desire is to see the way other people do; remaining there would mean sacrificing the opportunity to be a competent, respected member of his community. For Gray Fire, who lacks this sense of responsibility despite his age, the beautiful place is too tempting to resist. As Sees Behind Trees comes home, he sees with perfect clarity in a dream and knows that he has brought some of the beautiful place with him. However, this remnant of the beautiful place is symbolic, representing the understanding Sees Behind Trees has attained having completed his journey.
Moss
Moss appears at two critical moments in Sees Behind Trees’s development. It is the impetus for the change in his training for the coming-of-age ceremony, but it is also the guide that brings him home after losing Gray Fire in the beautiful place. Moss is thus a symbol of versatility and the importance of adapting to circumstances, and it emphasizes The Importance of Embracing People with Disabilities.
When Sees Behind Trees first encounters moss, it is a target for him to shoot, but he cannot see it well enough to hit his target. Moss is fragile and blends into its surroundings, much as Sees Behind Trees was able to do prior to the coming-of-age ceremony. Once it becomes clear that Sees Behind Trees can no longer ignore his disability, it is through the change from shooting moss to “seeing” behind trees that he achieves adulthood. Later in the novel, though, Sees Behind Trees learns how to use moss to his advantage. Rather than shooting at moss, he feels it with his hands, detecting which side of a tree it grows on to navigate home. This changed use associates moss with adaptability, reflecting Sees Behind Trees’s journey toward accepting himself and his abilities. Much as moss is not simply a target to shoot, Sees Behind Trees can do many things, including things that others cannot.
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