Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier Book 3 Blog Part 1 One Pages 1- 76

“I reluctantly let my bundle drop into the dim hole, thinking of the stones Agnes and Franz and I had thrown into the canal to seek out the monsters. My things thudded onto the dirt floor. I felt like an apple tree losing its fruit.” (Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring 19).

Griet must give up all she’s ever known to live and be a maid at the Vermeer household. She says this quote after she drops her belongings into the cellar where she’ll be sleeping.
What this means is that a part of Griet’s life is missing. Her family is all she’s known and who she’s been with for the sixteen years of her existence and she finds it difficult to adapt to her new home.

When Griet says this quote, she connects her feelings to nature – an apple tree, much like Sayuri did of Memoirs of a Geisha. Sayuri says a similar quote, along the lines of “Can you still go on calling yourself a tree if you no longer have leaves or roots or bark?”
An apple tree’s purpose is to produce fruit. If an apple tree were to lose its fruit, it would no longer serve its purpose. This is how Griet feels. She feels lost and alone as she transitions herself to life without her family.

Tracy Chevalier writes this phrase to add imagery and deeper meaning to the novel’s text, and to develop Griet’s thoughts into a simpler, more natural and raw illustration. Both Chevalier and Golden write with nature imagery because it reflects a simple meaning. The meaning of a tree losing its fruit alludes to the emptiness of the branches, revealing the loneliness of the character’s feelings.

This quote was chosen because it expresses both the theme of overcoming family separation, which is present in all three novels, and also introduces Griet’s character and personality to the readers and gives the readers a chance to get into Griet’s psyche and her thought process.