Short Stories: “The Green Lamp”, & “The Man Who Planted Trees”

The Green Lamp [1931] by Alexander Grin – ★★★★1/2

This short story begins in London, 1920. John Eve, a jobless and penniless young man, finds himself at the lowest point in his life in the city in the middle of winter. John has practically nowhere to go when he hears a proposition made to him in a bar from one rich stranger named Stilton. That man offers John ten pounds a month if John would rent a room in one unassuming building with a view to the street, and then would simply light a lamp covered by green cloth so it can be viewed from the street. John has to do this seemingly meaningless routine every day from five to twelve in the evening, just burning an oil lamp. Stilton then promises John that this would be his indefinite, paid “occupation”, and, in some months or years, perhaps some influential people would come and make John rich.

Of course, this is Stilton’s joke on poor John. Stilton merely wanted to play God with the life and destiny of some downtrodden man, using the man as his personal “living toy”. However, John is oblivious to all that, and just needs a place to stay and the money, so has no choice but to follow Stilton’s weird instructions. John starts doing what Stilton said, burning a green lamp in his window every night. However, what follows next is even more extraordinary that what happened in the beginning.

Alexander Grin (1880-1932) was a great Russian author known for his adventure-filled romantic novels The Scarlet Sails (1923) and She Who Runs on the Waves (1928). The Green Lamp is a simple story and another example of the author’s admirable originality and ability to touch people’s hearts. The story says much about what one simple opportunity or chance can do to a man (as natural talent and intelligence are useless if they just reside in a cave and never come out). Just like in his novel The Scarlet Sails, Grin shows in The Green Lamp that the joke is always on the society that tries to shame, fool, gossip about, or laugh at, an individual with a burning, often hard-to-understand, desire or eccentricity. In this story, what started as a childish game turned into one powerful symbol of unwavering dream and belief in the future. An object itself may not say much, but it may represent the world in a right context. The Green Lamp is a very short, but powerful tale of one drastic reversal of fortune and the importance of never losing hope. 💡

The Man Who Planted Trees [1953] by Jean Giono – ★★★★

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The one who plants trees knowing that he or she will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.” Rabindranath Tagore

In this short story by French author Jean Giono, our narrator travels through the French Alps when he meets one farmer who lives alone on one barren expanse of land. Retired and without a family, the farmer made it his daily job to plant trees, and he planted some one hundred thousand trees wherever he could do so. Our narrator is soon perplexed, but starts to find out more about this man and his personal mission, touched by the farmer’s perseverance to do good.

This is a moving story of human will to do something beautiful and worthwhile before it is too late. I also could not help but read the story as a response to the horrors of war (World War I is mentioned in the story) and the loss of so many lives. This also got me thinking of Morel who, in Romain Gary’s book The Roots of Heaven, tried to make sense of the post-World War II environment through ensuring the welfare of elephants. As the war takes lives, these courageous people either promote or plant life to ensure renewal and regeneration. This is only a symbolic side-note, and the prime theme of Giono’s short story is surely far-reaching actions of benevolence and altruistic environmentalism. Even the most selfless people can only do what they are physically capable of doing given their immediate circumstances, but it is also true that nothing reveals a person’s character quite so well as what they do in their free time when they do not have to do anything.🌱