On Killing a Tree - A representation of man’s cruelty to Nature. Patel’s “On Killing a Tree” is a poem which presents a graphic picture of the total annihilation of a tree. In the poem the tree symbolizes Nature. Modern man out of his indiscriminate greed and selfishness roots out nature and its very spirit. Man’s greed is not quenched by the mere physical process of killing a tree.Man realizes that it is not easy to kill a tree because it has grown slowly consuming the earth and absorbing water, air and sunrise for years. The mere act of hacking and chopping is not sufficient to kill a tree. The tree overcomes man’s onslaught by branching off small stems close to the ground and resumes life and grose again to its former size. Knowing a tree’s power to come to life again, man decides to pull out the root of the t...