NEEU 2025 | On Killing a Tree | Lecture 16

NEEU 2025 | On Killing a Tree | Lecture 16

• Topics covered include Games, On Killing A Tree, and NCERT Questions & Exercise.
• A recap of previous lecture topics: Games, Reach for the Top, NCERT Questions & Exercise.
• The professor's explanation was lucid, making complicated concepts easy to understand.
• The antonym of "timid" is brave.
• Quitting a job angrily may burn bridges with your employer, destroying relationships permanently.
• "He let the cat out of the bag" means to reveal a secret.
• "On Killing a Tree" is like an instruction manual for killing a tree; it highlights that trees are living beings.
• Killing a tree requires more than a simple jab; it involves uprooting the roots embedded deep in the soil.
• The act of killing involves the poem depicting tree courage and strength, urging the reader to possess similar qualities.

Word Meanings

• Jab: to hit forcefully or stab
• Consuming: using resources
• Feeding upon: deriving nutrition
• Crust: top layer of soil
• Leprous hide: discoloured bark of the tree
• Sprouting: giving rise/birth to
• Hack: cutting with heavy blows
• Chop: cut into pieces
• Bleeding bark: secretion of liquid from bark when cut
• Heal: recovering from a wound
• Curled: with twists and graceful moves
• Twigs: tenderly leaves
• Miniature: tiny and small
• Boughs: branches
• Unchecked: not being stopped
• Expand: to grow in an enormous way
• Former: belonging to the earlier
• Pull out: to take out by force
• Anchoring earth: trees securely held by roots in the earth
• Snapped out: chopped out
• Exposed: vulnerable, subjected to one's limitations
• Earth-cave: the inside of the earth
• Scorching and choking: drying up of tree after uprooted
• Browning: color gradually getting brown
• Hardening: process of becoming hard and dry
• Twisting: getting bent and moved
• Withering: process of decaying

Poetic Devices

• Alliteration: repetition of initial consonant sounds
• Personification: giving human qualities to non-human things.
• Metaphor: symbolic comparison

Explanation

• The poem emphasizes the time it takes to kill a tree, highlighting the effort needed, not its ease.
• A simple jab is insufficient; the tree must be pulled out from its roots.
• The roots contain strength and nourishment.
• Uprooting exposes the roots, leading to death due to heat exposure.
• The poem argues against the callous act of cutting trees.

NCERT Questions

• A simple jab of a knife is not enough to kill a tree; it needs to be pulled from its roots.
• Trees grow to their full size by absorbing nutrients from the soil, sunlight, air, and water over many years.
• "Bleeding bark" refers to the liquid produced when the bark is cut or hurt.
• The use of “No” in the third stanza underscores the significance of completely removing the tree's roots to kill it.
• "Anchoring earth" refers to the soil where the tree's roots are deeply embedded; "earth cave" describes the space inside the earth where the hidden roots are.
• The strength of the tree lies its roots, which provide nourishment and anchor it; exposing the roots leads to the tree's death.
• The tree is finally killed when roots are exposed and they die due to the heat.