The People in the Trees

by Hanya Yanagihara

But time, I’ve come to realize, is not for us to fill in such great, blank slabs: we speak of managing time, but it is the opposite—our lives are filled with busyness because those thin chinks of time are all we can truly master.

He had the sort of face that was memorable for its absences rather than its presences: cheeks so gaunt and cadaverous that it looked as if someone had reached in, scooped out the meat in two quick movements, and sent him on his way.

As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not.

The entire situation enraged me, as indulged children yearn for nothing more than the romance of poverty. Often I found myself dreaming of parents who were hardworking immigrants, for whom I was the sole hope.

your work there is not truly your own; you are chosen because of your mind and then asked, to varying degrees, to cease thinking for yourself and begin doing so for another.

And so although you gain fraternity, you forsake your independence.

they assumed they would make a great contribution to mankind, and that is a faultless goal, I suppose, but the process itself never seemed as compelling to them as the outcome was,

I had gone into science for its adventure, but to them, adventure was something to be endured, not sought, on the road to inevitable greatness.

it was easy then to believe that my life until this point had been only a long, tedious rehearsal, a thing to be impatiently endured and withstood: a simulacrum of a life, not a life itself.

gods are for stories and heavens and other realms; they are not to be seen by men. But when we encroach on their world, when we see what we are not meant to see, how can anything but disaster follow?

Oh god, I thought, can nothing in this jungle behave as it ought? Must fruits move and trees breathe and freshwater rivers taste of the ocean? Why must nothing obey the laws of nature? Why must everything point so heavily toward the existence of enchantment?

adenoidally,

Life—a brief life, at that—unfolded as a series of bright-dazzled occasions, a drumbeat of celebrations marking events and milestones that would in a more crowded, busier society be considered everyday events, worthy of nothing more than a comment.

unlearning things is much more difficult than learning them, and even the most courageous of minds will find itself tempted to retreat back into the known at the first opportunity.

I did not go to destroy a people or a country, as I am so often accused of doing, as if such things are ever as frequent or intentional as assumed. Did I, however, end up doing so? It is not for me to decide. I did what any scientist would have done. And if I had to—even knowing what would become of Ivu’ivu and all its people—I would probably do so again.

Shall I tell you how there are really no new stories in cases like these: how the men turned to alcohol, how the women neglected their handiwork, how they all grew fatter and coarser and lazier, how the missionaries plucked them from their houses as easily as one would pick an overripe apple from a branch?

“Have you ever noticed,” asked Victor, “that all of us have white men’s names? All of us. It’s so false. You’re trying to whitewash us, make us forget who we are and where we come from.”

Then there are years (sometimes decades) of hatred and resentment. Finally they are able to realize what beasts they were and what their lives might have been had I not adopted them and are overcome by a simple, powerful gratitude, which they feel they must share. I had always been slightly amused by this, but nothing more.