The Man Who Planted Trees Essay example -- Literary Review, Jean Giono

The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono was wan extraordinary story about one man’s efforts to help the environment. It tells the story of one shepherd's extensive and successful singlehanded determination to re-forest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps near Provence throughout the first half of the 20th century. The story is narrated by a man who throughout the book in anonymous. The story begins in the year 1910, when a young man is undertaking a long hiking trip through Provence, France, and into the Alps. The narrator runs out of water in a treeless, uninhabited valley where there is no trace of civilization. The narrator finds only a dried up well, but is saved by a middle-aged shepherd who gives him a drink of water from his water-gourd. Later, the shepherd takes the narrator to his cottage where he offers him food and a place for the night. As the narrator stays for the night he becomes curious about this shepherd, who lives all alone in this stone house, and decides to stay for a while longer. The shepherd, after being widowed, had decided to restore the ruined landscape of the isolated and largely abandoned valley by single-handedly cultivating a forest, tree by tree. The shepherd, Elzà ©ard Bouffier, makes holes in the ground and plants acorns that he had collected from far away into those holes. The narrator was astonished at what this man had done all on his own. It was an amazing project that not just anyone could have done. The narrator leaves the shepherd knowing for sure that he would be back to see what he had accomplished. He later fights in World War One. In 1920 the man returns back to the same valley. Instead of seeing a desolated valley with little progress, to his astonishment there were saplings... ...t. By late 2005, through the Pan-African Green Belt Network, over fifteen African countries had become involved with the Green Belt Movement. The movement spread beyond the African borders to the United States. For her lifelong dedication to environmental and human rights Maathai received numerous awards, including the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Right Livelihood Award, and the United Nation's Africa Prize for Leadership. Furthermore, in 2004 Maathai was honored with the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize becoming the first black woman and the first environmentalist to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Maathai was best known as the founder of the Green Belt Movement: an initiative to plant trees in forested areas of Kenya that were starting to be used commercially. Critics wondered whether a "tree planter" was truly a peace activist and I am here to say she was.