ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The poem uses an extended metaphor to describe the speaker’s anger as growing into a tree that bears poisonous apples. The speaker’s enemy then eats an apple from the tree and dies.

Detailed explanation-2: -A Poison Tree is a short and deceptively simple poem about repressing anger and the consequences of doing so. The speaker tells of how they fail to communicate their wrath to their foe and how this continues to grow until it develops into poisonous hatred.

Detailed explanation-3: -He compares his anger with a plant or a tree. We water the plant for its survival, and the author watered anger with fear, and tears day and night. We sun the plant to grow, and the poet says that he sunned his anger with his smiles and lying tricks whenever he saw his enemy and his anger continues to grow.

Detailed explanation-4: -The tree is a symbol of the growth of anger in the human mind which causes death. The apple is a symbol of good and evil and a reference of the Garden of Eden. In the poem, the tree grows poisoned apples as a result of the man’s repressed anger which his enemy then eats and dies.