In the Forest By Thomas Shapcott

In The Forest, By Thomas Shapcott is a poem about the impact of human action on the natural landscape and also the other inhabitants of that landscape. Thomas Shapcott is an Australian poet, playwright, editor, teacher and novelist. He has ad a very long and successful career as a pet and writer, with fifteen collections of poetry and six novels, and has won many awards for his work.

This poem empathises that the cutting down of one tree in a forest can impact not only the natural landscape of the forest, but a whole ecosystem of humans, animals and plants. Shapcott is trying to inform us of the affects of logging on the landscape and the inhabitants. The repetition of the word wait in the first stanza emphasises the fact that the animal inhabitants of the forest are waiting for the axe. This forces the responder to read the poem slower, hence, creating the slow tone that is created in the first few stanzas of the poem. The use of short sentences in this poem easily gets Shapcott’s message of the affect of destruction on the landscape and its inhabitants across. ‘The dark of the forest’ is an example of imagery in this poem. This has connotations of danger and darkness and makes the responder think that the forest that Shapcott is talking about is scary and dangerous. This suggests that the composer is trying to tell us that the constant destroying and logging of our natural landscape is having a very negative effect on the natural environment. Anthropomorphism can be seen in the next stanza where the bird is said to be ‘nervous’. This further emphasises that fact that the animals can sense what’s happening to their physical landscape and are waiting desperately for the moment their anticipating coming. ‘See them flinch and turn’ follows this line and suggests anxiety and nervousness, adding an element of heaviness to the poem.

‘Danger, the signs warn’ is seen at the end of the second stanza and suggests to the responder that the continuous destruction of the land will have tremendous consequences on, not only the land, but also the inhabitants and the way they exist within the landscape. The next line reads, ‘That! Slap of the axe. That!’, the repetition in this line immediately creates a excited, fast- passed tone and quickens the pace of the poem. Onomatopoeia can also be seen in this line in the word ‘slap’. In the next line of the stanza personification is used in the line ‘the tree is tensed’. This emphasises the fact that the inhabitants of the land are dramatically affected by the destruction of the physical landscape. The tree is so affected by the presence of such destructive human activity that it is forced to stand ridged, completely unmoving, in fear of the behaviour of human beings.

The reference to death in stanza five conveys the evil that is found in human activity and how in one short moment a living thing can die out all because of the irrational action of humans. The line ‘the gash in the forest’ alludes to the fact that the logging of one tree in a forest full of trees can leave and massive hole in the landscape and the inhabitants living within it. Personification is used once more in the sixth stanza in the line ‘now, says the axe, and the tree is fallen’. This line displays the immense power that humans have over nature. One word and a whole ecosystem of lives were lost. Shapcott then goes on to describe this. The line ‘the spider crushed in its secret nest’ conveys the way lives are so easily lost at the hand of humans. Death is represented again in the last stanza with the line ‘the skull of the forest is opened up’ this conveys how the forest has become an abandoned carcass of human distraction an emphasising how vulnerable the forest is to human activity. However, the final line of the poem reads, ‘But the birds have forgotten they have claimed other trees. They settle for sleep’ this line conveys that fact that logging and destruction of the forests and other natural landscapes has become such a usual occurrence that the inhabitants of the landscape have become quite accustomed to it. Though this poem Shapcott is trying to tell us that if logging continues to be allowed in Australia there will soon be no forest left and the damage done to our physical and even inner landscape will be irreversible.

I believe that ‘In the Forest’ by Thomas Shapcott has similarities to the poem ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’ because it conveys the consequences that human greed and destruction can have on the environment and physical landscape in which we live. The tip that is depictured in ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’ could be what will become of the forest that is seen in Shapcott’s poem if the barbaric destruction of the natural environment, because of human activity, doesn’t stop. It is also similar to ‘Flames and Dangling Wire’ because in both poems the personas seem to be persuading the responder to stop using the environment for our own personal gain and remember that the way we treat the physical landscape affects the inhabitants and their inner landscape.