Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
All Around the Mulberry Tree
Cal mentions a mulberry tree a little less than twelve times throughout the novel, but why? He eats berries off it, he references its significance in Chinese mythology, and the novel ends in the fall when Milton is dead and the mulberry tree is bare. But what does it mean?
At one point Cal touches on the tree's significance, and how he doesn't understand it either: "That mulberry tree had stood outside my bedroom on Middlesex, never divulging its significance to me" (3.10.153). Is Cal looking too hard for significance in objects, or have we just not discovered its meaning yet?