Plant an apple tree today

Plant an apple tree today is a recurring expression of hope made practical: the future may be unknowable or disastrous, but that uncertainty does not cancel the duty to do what good is possible now. The image moves from Jim’s late wife’s convictions into Jim’s response to the Bank robber, then broadens into the novel’s final statement of its ethical outlook.

Origin and Meaning

Jim’s late wife, a priest who tried to help people across religious and social boundaries, gave the image its moral force. She could not make Jack believe in God, but her faith was expressed less as doctrine than as action: she believed that trying to help others was a way of serving God. To sum up her view of the world, she quoted Martin Luther’s declaration that he would plant his apple tree even if he knew the world would fall apart the next day. The tree stands for work undertaken without any guarantee that the world, or its future, can be secured.

Her words also persist after her death as part of the bond between Jim and Jack. She remains the person who makes them more understanding toward each other, though she is no longer there to mediate between them. The expression is therefore both a principle and an inheritance: a remembered way of acting that survives the person who first taught it.

Jim’s Reuse of the Image

When the Bank robber asks why a police officer would help her rather than simply try to catch her, Jim answers by recalling his wife’s teaching. He cannot remember the exact attribution, but he conveys its central idea: even if the world is headed for catastrophe tomorrow, a person can plant an apple tree today. The Bank robber responds that the thought is lovely. In this exchange, the image is not an abstract maxim set apart from events; Jim uses it to explain a compassionate choice toward someone who has made a serious mistake.

That moment gives the expression a specific consequence. Jim’s wife’s ethic shapes his conduct after her death, and the Bank robber receives the words at a moment when she is confronting both her mistake and the help being offered to her. The saying does not promise that the danger will disappear or that the person acting kindly will control what happens next. It offers a reason to act despite that uncertainty.

The Closing Ethic

The novel returns to the image in its concluding reflection on what can be known. The boundaries of the universe remain unknown, and the truth about God is beyond human certainty; the practical demand left to the family is simply to do their best. In that final formulation, planting the tree means choosing a useful act even while imagining that the world may be destroyed tomorrow. The closing words, “We save those we can,” make the ethic still more direct: hope is not confidence in a perfect outcome, but care expressed through whatever help remains possible.