The People in the Trees

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses the sexual assault and rape of children, suicide, cultural appropriation, and colonialism.

At the heart of The People in the Trees is the theme of exploitation, which not only targets the natural resources found on Ivu’ivu, but also relies on the manipulation of the Ivu’ivuans and the king of U’ivu. Throughout the novel, Norton and a host of other scientists take as much as they can from the Ivu’ivuans in hopes of finding and selling immortality itself. They put themselves and their goals ahead of the well-being of the Indigenous people and have no regard for the destructive consequences of their greedy actions.

The exploitative nature of Norton’s actions is immediately apparent in his first seizure of an opa’ivu’eke. The narrative has already established that the local people believe that these turtles are sacred and that to touch one in an inappropriate moment has generational implications. Therefore, Norton’s willingness to touch Fa’a with turtle flesh reflects a malicious misuse of Fa’a’s cultural inhibitions to cause the man an existential degree of shame that compels him to keep Norton’s theft of the opa’ivu’eke a secret from the other researchers.