Response to The Forest

Response to The Forest

       The Forest is a short story talks about a special and unique relationship between a twenty-two-year-old girl – Bianca and seventy-nine-year-old scientist – Kryzsztof. Bianca dropped out from her graduate school because she thought the science was too pushy and people who were doing science were eager to gain quick success. Kryzsztof was an eminent but forgetful Polish biochemist who gave a bunch of same talks to American scientists. They met in a scientists’ party, and initially Bianca disliked Kryzsztof due to the misspelling of her name, but after they shared Kryzsztof’s special vodka, they talked about their past and their stories concerning bison and the forest in northeast Poland. After Kryzsztof demonstrated his scientific work of sturdy bubbles, Bianca drove Kryzsztof to a forest and they saw a group of beautiful deer. Kryzsztof fell to the muds but saw the stars from which he found himself back into the most natural one as well as Bianca.

       In the story, Barrett mainly wants to find out the relationship between nature and science. The nature here includes the nature of the environment like the forest as well as the human nature. She collects the scientific and historical data to make her story more vivid and impressive. For example, Kryzsztof’s process of generating large and sturdy bubbles is based on scientific knowledge of surface tension, but through the conversations between Kryzsztof and Bianca, Barrett aims to satire the deteriorative condition of science development nowadays. Another data is a part of Polish history in the background of which Kryzsztof’s mother disappeared. She grew up in the forest where there were bison and bears and many other rare animals, but during the world war I German soldiers destroyed the forest as well as bison, she came back and tried to save the forest. She vanished because of the war, but her spirit still existed in the special vodka made from bison grass and accompanied Kryzstof.

       In the end of the story, Krysztof wanted to go back to his most natural and original life and way of thinking about science like his mother. Bianca wanted to go away from her sister and started her own life like her grandfather. The power of nature saved them and aroused their feeling of living in the most natural way.