45 pages • 1-hour read
Sees Behind Trees
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of ableism and death.
Mentorship and Intergenerational Learning
The characters in Sees Behind Trees span four generations, ranging from Otter and Gray Fire as the oldest, through Sees Behind Trees’s parents and uncle, to Sees Behind Trees and Three Chances, and concluding with Checha as the youngest. Across these groups, everyone is constantly learning from each other, with younger characters learning cultural and social norms from their elders, while the older characters learn innovation and compassion from those who are younger. In this way, the novel complicates the more traditional understanding of knowledge as something that is passed down through time. While it honors this kind of ancestral learning, the novel also suggests that no generation has all the answers; instead, the bonds they forge between them bring them all closer to living better lives.
Gray Fire takes on the role of Sees Behind Trees’s mentor for most of the novel, and he contributes key lessons to Sees Behind Trees’s coming-of-age journey. For instance, when Gray Fire tells Sees Behind Trees how to navigate without conscious thought, he criticizes Sees Behind Trees for pretending to understand, saying, “Then don’t nod your head […] If you don’t admit your confusion you’ll never learn anything” (52). This advice contradicts Sees Behind Trees’s belief about adulthood—namely, that adults must always be confident. Through Gray Fire, Sees Behind Trees instead learns that being an adult can mean being honest about one’s own uncertainty. This image of an elderly man teaching an adolescent boy is a highly familiar one within both Indigenous American cultures and human society writ large.
However, the novel adds nuance to this depiction by portraying a mentor/mentee relationship that teaches both participants about maturity. For example, Sees Behind Trees repeats Gray Fire’s lesson back to him on their way through the woods, noting how Gray Fire, too, needs to admit his confusion at times. Gray Fire’s disappearance, too, is a subversion. While mentors in literature commonly depart the narrative (intentionally or not) to signal the protagonist’s internalization of their lessons, Gray Fire rushes toward the beautiful place with little thought of Sees Behind Trees at all. Instead, his departure itself becomes the lesson, a cautionary tale about clinging too tightly to dreams.
The novel’s conclusion underscores the collaborative, intergenerational nature of learning. Otter, Sees Behind Trees’s parents, and Sees Behind Trees himself become communal parents for Checha, renamed Acorn. Otter, the weroance, promises to teach Acorn “every secret she knows about hunting,” while Sees Behind Trees plans to tell him “the whole story, even the parts [he doesn’t] understand” (104). Their promises link their mentorship to the transmission of knowledge, but that knowledge includes the valuable lesson from Gray Fire about admitting confusion. When Sees Behind Trees references Acorn being “ready” to go “into the forest together” (104), he foreshadows a mentorship modelled after his own with Gray Fire, signaling that the intergenerational learning will continue into the future.
Maturity Achieved Through Responsibility and Empathy
Sees Behind Trees is a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, meaning that one of the central themes is the protagonist’s attempts to understand what it means to grow up. Maturity, responsibility, and empathy are all elements in Sees Behind Trees’s journey, and they combine to reflect the difference between mere age and “true” adulthood. Because simply aging is not the same as maturing, Sees Behind Trees struggles both with adjusting his behavior to “match” his age and with understanding that growing up does not require him to change the more fundamental parts of his identity. His reflection as people start to respect Sees Behind Trees’s ability and call him by his adult name encapsulates the conflict: “I was still just me, with a different name” (27). The rest of his journey is about figuring out how to grow into what he in some ways already is.
Many of Sees Behind Trees’s lessons are learned in the negative, such as learning that adulthood is not just being comfortable being alone or that adulthood is not overconfidence. In part, this speaks to the fact that there is no one way to be an adult—a fact suggested by the distinct names the children receive during their coming-of-age ceremony. Adulthood is instead a matter of cultivating the best of oneself. This is where the emphasis on responsibility and understanding comes in, as these traits allow any person to live usefully and harmoniously among others.
In speaking with Gray Fire before their journey, for example, Sees Behind Trees notes how Gray Fire’s “mind seemed younger—more curious and less sure” (51). However, the novel suggests that Gray Fire’s real immaturity lies not in his curiosity or uncertainty but in his impatience to start the journey. Despite his advanced age, his comfort in being alone, and his knowledge of the forest, Gray Fire insists on pushing ahead with the journey despite the risk to himself and Sees Behind Trees, for whom Gray Fire is taking responsibility. Sees Behind Trees goes along with Gray Fire, trusting him because he is an adult, only to find out that adulthood does not mean that one is always right.
When Gray Fire disappears, Sees Behind Trees must face everything he suspects is needed for maturity all at once. He is alone, he must navigate the forest, and he finds himself in charge of the infant, Checha. His successes combine the lessons he learned from Gray Fire, like using moss to navigate, but his most important success involves taking responsibility for others. When he saves Checha, Sees Behind Trees thinks that Gray Fire “would have known exactly what to do, but [Sees Behind Trees] didn’t” (90). Sees Behind Trees’s humility is itself a sign of his developing maturity, but it is not one that prevents him from doing what needs to be done. When he brings not only himself but also Checha home safely, he shows that he has grown into a responsible young adult.
The Importance of Embracing People with Disabilities
From the beginning of the novel, Dorris makes it clear that Sees Behind Trees cannot see as well as his peers, and this disability is the first obstacle he faces. Sees Behind Trees needs to shoot a piece of moss with an arrow to prove himself worthy of being considered a young adult in his community, but no amount of training can overcome his eyesight. The solution to this issue is both adaptive and inclusive, highlighting the importance of diversity. The weroance creates a test that involves “seeing” behind trees, remarking, “Sometimes […] the people need someone to do the impossible” (9). This initial example suggests that Sees Behind Trees’s disability can be an asset both to himself and his community.
A conversation between Gray Fire and Sees Behind Trees elaborates on the distinct perspective that Sees Behind Trees’s disability gives him. When Gray Fire calls Sees Behind Trees’s ability a “trick,” he asks in response, “Was your running fast a trick?” (36). To Gray Fire, listening closely is a “trick” simply because it is not thought of as a typical skill, like running, and yet Sees Behind Trees has worked hard to refine this ability. Gray Fire and many others take eyesight and hearing for granted, but Sees Behind Trees has turned listening into a potent skill that can even surpass the eyesight of his peers.
When Sees Behind Trees journeys home, his skills save Checha’s life. On his way to Karna and Pitew’s camp, Sees Behind Trees “trip[s] over roots, stub[s] [his] toes on rocks,” and his “shins and face [are] scratched by low branches” (88), which he cannot see to avoid. However, his powers of listening and observation allow him to hear the “deeper” silence within the quiet of the camp, and he tries “to remember everything about [their] first meeting” (89), allowing him to find Checha. Fulfilling the weroance’s prediction that “the people” would need someone to do the “impossible,” Sees Behind Trees brings skills and abilities beyond those of his peers to save a life.
While the novel frames Sees Behind Trees’s disability as an advantage in certain contexts, it does not suggest that his acceptance in the community is contingent on proving his “usefulness.” Sees Behind Trees is not the only character with a disability: Gray Fire limps because he is missing his toes. What’s more, this limp prevents Gray Fire from running, which was once his own exceptional talent. Nevertheless, Gray Fire is a respected and prominent figure in the community. Thus, Sees Behind Trees’s journey has less to do with securing a space among his people than it does bolstering his own sense of agency and purpose.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence