Instead of providing man with a means to express the freedom of his soul, nature confines the soul. Nature serves as a symbol for the captivity and death of the soul. The black man that is lynched in the poem could not be free in this society, and the girl he leaves behind mourns at the sight of the tree. They hung my black young lover To a cross roads tree. The tree is the object on which this girl s lover was hung.
Nature becomes a symbol for the burden of the anguish of the soul.
Nature s role in this poem not only kills the young lover, but also suffocates the soul of the young girl. On a gnarled and naked tree Nature bears witness to the evils of man, the sufferings of love, the loss of a loved one to a brutal and inhumane death. Nature serves not as a symbol of the burden of the freedom of the soul, but as a symbol for the captivity and death of the soul. Here nature is the picture of desolation, evil, and raw human pain. Although at first glance, Chopin and Hughes seem to be two very different authors with different life experiences and struggles.