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</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><br></p><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">“War Beneath the Tree” first appeared in </font><i><font color="#000000" size="3">Omni</font></i><font color="#000000" size="3"> in 1979.</font></font></p>
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</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">SUMMARY: </font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">Robin’s toys, the spaceman, bear, dancing doll, and guardsmen,
provide him with more company and guidance than his mother, who wonders what he
will do when he doesn’t have robotic sycophants to spoil him.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Her robot maid readily agrees with everything
she says.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">The maid tells the toys to
straighten up.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Bear and Robin hold a
conversation about squiggling and problems sleeping, and Robin says that he
will get something for Bear on his birthday tomorrow.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Bear sings a Christmas Carol and thinks of
the problems with the other toys and of the toys from the previous year.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Bear goes out to plan strategies with the
other toys for the coming battle.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Robin
dreams of ice skating and hitting his head, but awakens in bed. He creeps out
to see his mother, Mrs. Jackson, described as fat as Santa, and all the new toys
under the tree.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span></font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">Robin watches all the new toys move and get out of their
boxes: a clown, a raggedy girl, and a climbing monkey, along with cowboys, Indians,
and a knight with a dragon. The fierce battle begins and the old toys are burnt
and defeated one by one.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Bear considers
running and hiding in a box in the basement but fights on.</font></font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">In the morning Robin is playing with his toys, and says one
of the Native Americans doesn’t work, damaged in the previous night.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">The maid asks where the new toys are, and
Robin’s mother says, “They’re programmed to self-destruct, I understand … But
Robin, you know how the new toys all came, the Knight and Dragon and all your
Cowboys, almost by magic?</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Well, the same
thing can happen with people.” </font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Robin
looks frightened as she finishes, “The same wonderful thing is going to happen
here, in our home. “</font></font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">COMMENTARY:</font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">A fairly straightforward satire of poor parenting and the
isolation of childhood, it also provides an interesting metaphor </font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">for an interesting part of growing up – the putting
aside of childish things in favor of almost equally but perhaps slightly more age
appropriate new, shiny things, that soon die and lose their luster in turn.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">The lonely children in Wolfe’s fiction occupy
a pretty important part of his writing, and here, despite the fact that there
is very little more than the surface metaphor of objects that mean the world
when they are new and are then are almost easily replaced with fickle novelty,
we can see that fantastic escapism at work.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3">
</font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">There is a slightly more critical tone to the treatment of the mother,
Mrs. Jackson, who is completely out of touch with her child’s feelings and
perspective.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span></font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">The toys do the parenting, with the Spaceman saying it is
time for bed and the mother echoing it, and with a doll programmed to begin the
boy’s sex education, and the mother remains blind to her own pampered
surroundings by “transistorized sycophants.”</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3">
</font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Her smoking while pregnant is another example of her rather poor
parenting (this was, after all, written in the late 70s).</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Finally, Wolfe shows us what an only child
would feel at the prospect of a new baby: fear of being replaced, destroyed inside
and out and meaning nothing to a parent.</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3">
</font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">To a young child, it might very well be like being thrown into the fire
emotionally. </font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">Her lack of empathy for the
son’s potential horrified response (albeit influenced by the absurdity of the
literal situation he witnessed) is captured quite nicely.</font></font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">I feel there is an indictment of the consumerism inherent in
Christmas and birthdays here, where Robin considers buying his toy a present,
but this is more innocent and sweet than the impression we are left of the
mother, and a father who is completely absent as he travels in Brazil over
Christmas.</font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font face="Calibri"><font color="#000000" size="3">What makes the story effective is the emotional truth of the
tale: how does it feel to be forgotten and cast aside?</font><span><font color="#000000" size="3"> </font></span><font color="#000000" size="3">The early everyday horrors of childhood that
stem from unfamiliarity with the world are nicely captured here.</font></font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">One other detail is that besides the Christmas Carol the
Bear sings, there is little mention of what Christmas is actually supposed to
connote – salvation and the birth of Christ, instead merely being a time of new
toys replacing old ones.</font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">Wolfe commented “This is simple truth: Tonight you and I,
with billions of others, are sitting around the fire we call ‘the sun’, telling
stories; and from time to time it has been my turn to entertain. I have
occasionally remembered that though you are not a child, there is a child alive
in you still, for those in whom the child is dead will not hear stories. Thus I
wrote ‘War Beneath the Tree’, and certain others.”</font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">CONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:</font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
</font><p style="margin:0in 0in 10pt"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri" size="3">This has a dark parallel with the much later “And When They
Appear”, but Wolfe’s treatment of isolated and lonely children found their best
expression in “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories” and “The Death of
Doctor Island.”</font></p><font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman" size="3">
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