The boy cuts off the tree’s branches

The boy cuts off the tree’s branches when he returns as an adult seeking a house. The tree freely offers the branches so he can build one and be happy, and he carries them away. The scene turns an earlier pattern of welcome and giving into a more consequential exchange: the boy gains material shelter, while the tree loses part of herself and is left without him. Her happiness persists, but the story places that repeated judgment beside her solitude and growing depletion.

Background and Return

Time passes, the boy grows older, and the tree is often alone. When he comes back, she greets him by inviting him to climb her trunk, swing from her branches, eat apples, and play in her shade. The invitation recalls their earlier intimacy, but the boy answers that he is too busy to climb trees. His return therefore brings them together without restoring their childhood relationship: he is present, yet his purpose is now shaped by adult needs.

The boy says he wants a house to keep warm and explains that he wants a wife and children, so he needs a place to live. He asks whether the tree can give him a house. The request makes his immediate need explicit, while the explanation ties shelter to the family life he hopes to establish. Unlike the tree’s invitation to play, which offers companionship in the present, his request looks toward a life beyond her shade.

The Offer and the Cutting

The tree answers that she has no house; the forest is her house. She nevertheless tells him he may cut off her branches and build a house, adding that he will then be happy. Her response transforms what she has into a resource for his purpose. The offer is not an exchange of equal goods: the boy receives material with which to build, while the tree relinquishes the branches that formed part of her own living shape.

The boy accepts the offer and cuts off her branches. He carries them away to build his house. The action follows directly from the tree’s permission, but its consequence is more lasting than the earlier gift of apples: those could be taken and sold, whereas the branches are removed from the tree herself. The scene records both the practical result, a house for the boy, and the physical cost borne by the giver.

Happiness, Absence, and Repetition

After the boy has taken the branches, the tree is happy, and that happiness continues for a long time. Yet the narrative also says that she was often alone and later describes her as sad. The contrast prevents her happiness from functioning as a simple measure of how well the exchange has served her. She has helped the boy, but the benefit to him does not mean that she has regained his company or her former completeness.

The episode belongs to a repeating structure of return and request. The tree first welcomes the boy with the pleasures of climbing, apples, play, and shade; as he grows older, he comes back with a need rather than an appetite for play. She meets that need by offering what she can, and the boy leaves with what he needs. The house episode thus extends a cycle in which the tree’s acts of giving sustain the boy’s changing aims, while his departures leave her alone.

Place in the Tree’s Decline

The branches are not the last part of herself that the tree offers. Later, she tells the boy to cut down her trunk and make a boat so he can sail away and be happy. The tree is happy after he leaves in the boat, but the text qualifies that happiness as unreal. This later sacrifice makes the branch-cutting scene an early, significant step in a progression from gifts of fruit to the loss of the tree’s branches and then her trunk.

When the boy returns much later, the tree says she has nothing left and is just an old stump. His need has also changed: he no longer asks for money, a house, or a boat, but says he needs only a quiet place to sit and rest because he is very tired. The tree welcomes him to sit down. The boy’s cutting of the branches therefore stands within a broader relationship marked by the tree’s repeated material giving and the boy’s changing life stages; the episode’s promise of happiness is real as a recurring refrain, but it also accompanies an accumulating cost to the giver.