History Literature / TheOverstory

* AmbiguousDisorder: Adam is considered "socially retarded" by his school (growing up in the 1960s where diagnoses would be less widespread), is SuperGullible as a child and HatesBeingTouched. One of his colleagues as an adult refers to him as "borderline autistic".

* AwesomenessByAnalysis: Adam is rather [[AmbiguousDisorder oblivious about humanity]] and so [[SuperGullible easily fooled]], but manages to give himself an astute understanding of human nature and even devote his life to studying it just through research.

* DeterminedDefeatist: ''Everyone'', but especially Patricia, who becomes convinced that humanity won't be able to save the trees. but devotes herself to trying anyways. Despite her NotGoodWithPeople tendencies, she deeply admires humanity because of this trope.

* TheHermit: Patricia spends a long time living alone in the forest after being rejected by the scientific community. Though at first she nearly crosses the DespairEventHorizon, she eventually grows to enjoy being alone and [[NotGoodWithPeople has trouble going back to humanity.]] After part 2, Douglas lives happily alone as the sole custodian of a GhostTown.

* NotGoodWithPeople: Patricia is always a bit isolated from other people and prefers working alone with plants, but this is taken up to eleven after she is shunned by the scientific community and takes to living completely in the forest. She's happy with her life but is reluctant to interact with any people at all, if she can afford to. She later somewhat develops out of it, but always prefers spending time with just Dennis and the trees if she can help it.

''The Overstory'' by Richard Powers is a 2018 UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize winning novel which explores the topic of trees and humanity's relation to - and [[GreenAesop destruction of]] - the environment through the lens of an EnsembleCast of nine characters, each with their own lives and backstories that are all - some directly, and others more subtly - connected by trees.

* AntiEscapismAesop: With regards to the fictional game ''Mastery'': players end up dissatisfied with the constant pointlessness of the game, and the beauty of its graphics can never hold a candle to the real world - the only problem is the real world being filled with more permanent consequences, but Neelay thinks that is just what would give the game meaning.

* ArcWords: "People change into other things."

* EnsembleCast: There isn't a single protagonist of the novel - it follows nine characters, each of whom get their own chapter at the beginning (except for Dorothy and Ray, who share one) and alternate short segments throughout the rest of the book.

* ExplosiveStupidity: A very much PlayedForDrama example: an attempt at arson goes wrong when the devices set to detonate and set the place on fire explode too early - [[spoiler:and Olivia is caught in the blast.]]

* NotSoAboveItAll: Professor Rabinowski discusses in his lecture how everyone who studies cognitive psychology is this - knowing about biases doesn't in any way make you immune to them. Adam learns this about himself the hard way.

* {{Pride}}: Patricia, given her interest in Ancient Greek works, compares the fallout of her first scientific paper (where her findings are savagely criticized) to someone being destroyed by their hubris - had she not allowed herself just a bit of overconfidence in the conclusion of an otherwise measured work, or tried harder to disprove some of the initial objections against her, none of this might have happened.

* WorldWreckingWave: One founded in RealLife - the first short story describes how the chestnut blight spreads throughout North America and kills every chestnut in sight.

* HopeSproutsEternal: A brutally [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] example: when [[spoiler:The Hoel chestnut]] is cut down, sprouts grow on top of it ready to become new trees, but [[spoiler:these are destined to be destroyed by the blight anyway.]]

* TheLostWoods: How the western Cascades are described when Patricia visits them.
---> She presses on fissures of bark and her fingers sink in knuckle-deep. A bit of bushwhacking reveals the extend of the prodigious rot. Crumbling, creature-riddled boles, decaying for centuries. Snags gothic and twisted, silvery as inverted icicles. She has never inhaled such fenced putrefaction. The sheer mass of ever-dying life packed into each single cubic foot, woven together with fungal filaments and dew-betrayed spiderweb leaves her woozy. Mushrooms ladder up the sides of trunks in terraced ledges. Dead salmon feed the trees. Soaked by fog all winter long, spongy green stuff she can't name covers every wooden pillar in thick baize reaching higher than her head.
---> Death is everywhere, oppressive and beautiful. She sees the source of that forestry doctrine she so resisted in school. Looking at all this glorious decay, a person might be forgiven for thinking that ''old'' mean decadent, that such thick mats of decomposition were cellulose cemeteries in need of the rejuvenating ax. She sees why her kind will always dread these close, choked thickets, where the beauty of solo trees gives way to something massed, scary, and crazed. Where the fable turns dark, where the slasher film builds to primal horror, this is where the doomed children and wayward adolescents must wander. There are things in here worse than wolves and witches, [[PrimalFear primal fears]] that no amount of civilizing will ever tame.

* NotGoodWithPeople: Patricia is always a bit isolated from other people and prefers working alone with plants, but this is taken UpToEleven after she is shunned by the scientific community and takes to living completely in the forest. She's happy with her life but is reluctant to interact with any people at all, if she can afford to. She later somewhat develops out of it, but always prefers spending time with just Dennis and the trees if she can help it.

* ThatManIsDead: An older Patricia thinks this aboutt her younger self who first published the idea that trees can communicate, after she discovers that her hypothesis has been VindicatedByHistory.

* FamousLastWords: "But not this? This will never end--what we have. Right?"

* ThinksLikeARomanceNovel: [[spoiler:Dorothy]] can't help but compare her [[YourCheatingHeart escapades]] to adultery novels she has read.

* YourCheatingHeart: [[spoiler:Dorothy]] ends up having several affairs [[spoiler:while she is married to Ray.]]

''The Overstory'' by Richard Powers is a 2018 UsefulNotes/PulitzerPrize winning novel which explores the topic of trees and humanity's relation to - and [[GreenAesop destruction of]] - the environment through the lens of an EnsembleCast of nine characters, each with their own lives and backstories that are all - some directly, and others more subtly - connected by trees. The book is divided into four parts. The first, "Roots" is a series of short stories, each focusing on one of the main characters. The second part, "Trunk", focuses on how five of the characters are joined together in an ecological movement while continuing to follow the lives of the other four. The third part, "Crown", deals with the fallout of [[DramaBomb the last part's ending]] over a time period of twenty years, while the shorter fourth part "Seeds" acts as an epilogue to the book as a whole.

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* YourCheatingHeart: [[spoiler:Dorothy]] ends up having several affairs [[spoiler:while she is married to Ray.]]