The Orchard Keeper

The decaying orchard near Arthur’s house is an important symbol in the novel. The eponymous orchard has been abandoned for a long time because the fruit produced by the apple trees has become “venomously bitter” (95). The failed orchard is a symbol for Red Branch and for a way of life that is becoming obsolete in the face of The Encroachment of Modernity. The orchard is a traditional way of producing crops that does not depend on heavy machinery or technology to be efficient and that allows a small and isolated community to feed itself. With the world changing, however, the old ways can no longer endure. The orchard has been abandoned just as the town itself will be—a relic of a lost world that is now only used to cover up the violence of the present.

However, the orchard only conceals human misdeeds for so long. Marion hides Kenneth’s body in the pit to conceal the murder he has committed, but Arthur discovers the corpse. Nature continually stymies humans’ attempts to turn it to their own purposes. The failed orchard is an especially resonant metaphor for this resistance because orchards are, by definition, human experiments in controlling and manipulating the natural world.