The dominant motif of “The Man Who Planted Trees” is one of death and rebirth. As the narrator wanders the dry and desolate expanse that will later be home to a lush, forested ecosystem, the imagery brings to mind T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” which chronicles a broken world mirroring the devastation of postwar Europe. The only signs of life are the charcoal burners, whose occupation is to destroy the fruits of the natural world to fuel weapons of destruction. Amid the detritus of an old world whose traditions and values have been swept away by modern warfare, the narrator cannot imagine that any life could possibly spring from this parched landscape.

Yet thanks to Bouffier’s efforts, the area is reborn—first with trees and then with all the flora and fauna that forests help introduce into an ecosystem. Such bounties attract young farming families, whose simple self-sufficient lives are very far removed from the lives of the charcoal burners, who know only destruction. As is common with rebirth narratives, the narrator often uses Christian terminology to describe the ecological and social revitalization; for example, he refers to the villagers’ lime tree as “an indisputable symbol of resurrection” (27).