Notes For "Plants" by Olive Senior

“Plants” by Olive Senior
What is the prompt asking you to do?

The prompt is asking me to analyze how the author portrays the complex
relationships between the speaker, audience, and plant life.
Outline
The narrator warns the audience through the sexual imagery describing
plant’s flowers and fruit compared to the colonial personification
characterizing the plants themselves that although plants seduce humans
through their sweet scent and taste, they set out to dominate the world and
even humans.
Quotes Notes
1. “Plants are deceptive” 1. States author’s tone for hating
2. “As if once rooted they know plants
their places” 2. Might talk about domination
3. “Not like animals” 3. Thinks animals are inferior
4. “Like us, always running 4. Thinks plants pose a real
around, leaving traces” threat to human dominance
5. “Imperialistic grand design” 5. Personify plants to conquerors
6. “Armies of mangrove on the 6. Evidence for plant’s sinister
march” imperialism
7. “Clinging tendrils anchoring 7. Personify plants as
themselves everywhere” establishing bases-conquest
8. “Shoots bent on conquest, 8. Personification to establish
invasive seedlings seeking bases, proliferate, and conquer
wide open spaces” the territory
9. “Colonizing ambitions of 9. Personification straight up
hitchhiking burrs on your calling it colonization -- Uses
sweater, surf-riding nuts many different seeds to cement
bobbing in the ocean, the idea that plants colonize
parachuting seeds” through their seedlings
10. “Special agents called 10. Could be establishing a new
flowers” idea
11. “Dressed, perfumed, and 11. Author telling audience that
made for romancing … with flowers are used to seduce
you” humans -- Sexual imagery
12. “Don’t deny it my dear -- 12. Author describing seduction
I’ve seen you sniff and exclaim” to the audience -- Giving the
13. “That sweet fruit, that berry, audience warning about plants
is nothing more than 13. Uses taste to warn about a
14. “The instrument to seduce trap
you into scattering plant
progeny”
15.
Although humans often see plants as positive aspects of nature, they

could be demonized. This negative portrayal of plants is demonstrated in the
poem Plants by Olive Senior, where he identifies plants as threatening. The
narrator warns the audience about the threatening nature of plants through
the sexual diction describing plant’s flowers and fruit compared to the colonial
personification characterizing the plants themselves that although plants
seduce humans through their sweet scent and taste, they set out to dominate
the world and even humans.
The narrator uses sexual diction to describe the plant’s seduction of
humans through their flowers and fruit, warning the audience about the cover
plants would create for their own domination. When first describing plants as
an agent of seduction, Senior states that plants are “dressed, perfumed, and
made-up for romancing.” Senior’s use of “dressed”, “perfumed”, and “made-up”
are words that describe the means that women present themselves to sexually
attract men. The narrator communicates that the initial lovely taste of plants
lures the human and provides a cover for their true motives of conquest to the
audience. Additionally, Senior asserts to the audience that “sweet fruit… is
nothing more than ovary.” The narrator states that “sweet fruit” is used to
entice humans into spreading the plant’s seeds, increasing the reproduction
and domination of plants. The narrator uses “sweet fruit” to warn the
audience of the covers plants go to in order to spread and conquer the world.
Additionally, the narrator uses colonial personification to warn the
audience about plant’s malice, characterizing the plants as malevolent
creatures attempting to dominate the human race. Senior first characterizes
plants as “from the way they breed … imperalistic grand design,” setting to
conquer the world and dominate all organisms, including humans. The
malovolence of plants to dominate humans and pursue their prosperity at the
expense of humans is weilded as a warning towards the audience to despise
plants despite its seductive nature. Furthermore, the narrator personifies
specific plants, including “hitchhiking burrs on your sweater,” “surf-riding nuts
bobbing in the ocean,” “parachuting seeds” as a repeating series of the plant's
colonial conquest. Plant’s repeated imperialist agenda to cement to the
audience that plants have imperialist motives to dominate the human race.

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Notes For "Plants" by Olive Senior

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“Plants” by Olive Senior

What is the prompt asking you to do?

Although humans often see plants as positive aspects of nature, they

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