The Orchard Keeper

In The Orchard Keeper, cycles of violence span generations and dominate the lives—and fates—of the characters. This violence can come from places outside Red Branch. Two of the most obviously violent men in the novel—Kenneth and Marion—are shaped by their experiences in World War I. Marion has flashbacks to a time when he and his comrades were attacked on a Navy vessel, while Kenneth tells his wife that his time in the military was so violent that he qualified for medical disability. The amoral abandon of World War I, in which millions died in often-pointless battles, traumatized both men and showed them a level of violence that they had never encountered before. When they return to Red Branch, they bring the trauma and violence with them. Marion becomes alienated from any form of legal responsibility for his actions, refusing to invest himself in any institution that might be associated with the horrors of World War I. Kenneth perpetrates violence that was commendable in the theater of war but that is not tolerated at home. In different ways, both men bring the war home with them, imposing the conflict’s horrors and violence on the next generation and those around them.

In one sense, these characters are mirroring not only their human environment but the natural order itself. Nature is filled with cycles of violence. In the ecosystem of the mountains, predators and prey exist in balance with one another. To survive, every creature must either enact or flee from violence. Either way, violence is an essential part of an existence that is predicated on passing on genes and knowledge to the next generation. Not even a big predator like the panther is safe from violence, as the owl attacks the panther at the end of the novel. These cycles of violence are endemic to the natural world, a prerequisite for survival and reproduction that cannot be judged from a moral standpoint but that nonetheless has the power to horrify. This prompts Marion to excuse his own violence with an allusion to predators and prey: The implication is that it makes no more sense to impose a moral perspective on humanity than it would on the owl or panther.

Not all characters share this perspective, however. John attempts to break free from the recurring violence, taking the money from the hawk bounty and trying to return it. This is impossible, both in a physical and a bureaucratic sense, as the hawk has already been thrown into the furnace. Ironically, the very mechanisms of “civilization”—institutions that would seem to mark humanity’s aspirations toward something beyond nature’s violence, e.g., morality—stymie John’s rejection of violence. Then John tries to remove himself from Red Branch, hoping that this might bring an end to the violence he has known all his life. He returns to find the town abandoned and his mother dead, both his community and his family ended by the violent passage of time. The natural order triumphs and the violence continues, seeping back into the wilderness but remaining present nonetheless as the trauma and the understanding of violence are passed down through stories. Neither human nor animal can consider themselves free from the recurrent cycles of violence that define existence.