Myth and Storytelling in Appleseed

The Thematic Claim: Stories Shape—and Trap—Their Characters

In Appleseed, Matt Bell weaves fairy tales, epic quests, and biblical allegory to examine how stories function as both a creative and a destructive force. The novel argues that myths and narratives are not neutral: they shape identity, justify environmental exploitation, and offer the possibility of redemption—but they can also trap characters in cycles of violence and desire. The text constantly questions whether any story can escape the patterns it inherits, or whether even the most hopeful narrative is complicit in the damage it seeks to undo.

The First Faun’s Mythic Trap

The earliest story in the novel is the myth of the first faun, presented in chapter 19. This faun exists in a “simultaneity” of mythic time, where all events—his revels, his crime, his death—happen at once, endlessly repeating. The narrative describes his life as a “looping life” inside a myth that offers no agency. He is born into a story where, by the will of the gods, he assaults his niece at her wedding, causing her death by vipers. Only when the three witches (who are sometimes fates, sometimes furies) intervene does the myth “glitch,” cutting the faun out of the cycle and forcing him into linear time. This act of story-breaking is paradoxical: the witches give the faun “choice, free will, control, all too late to do him any good.” The first faun’s tale illustrates the novel’s central tension: stories can condemn characters to repeat their worst selves, yet even when the narrative is broken, the damage lingers. The faun’s punishment—living with memory and regret—suggests that freedom from myth does not guarantee a better story.

Chapman: Legend, Complicity, and the Tree of Forgetting

The faun Chapman, a later incarnation of the same mythic being, lives within the human story of westward expansion. His brother Nathaniel embodies the story of dominion: he recites a creed of “possessions and enrichment, dominion and control,” dreaming of cities and farms carved from the Ohio Territory (chapter 3). Chapman initially participates in this narrative, planting apple nurseries from seeds because he “cannot abide grafted trees.” Yet he also nurtures a private myth—the Tree of Forgetting, a reinterpretation of the Garden of Eden. In chapter 6, Chapman argues with Nathaniel about the biblical story: “What good could a Tree of Knowledge do for immortals not yet cursed to die? … Not a Tree of Knowledge but a Tree of Forgetting.” He imagines an apple that would allow him to “awake fresh as a babe,” freed from his hybrid identity and his past. This story sustains his decade-long quest, but he admits it might be “only a story he tells himself.” The novel deepens the critique in chapter 15, where Chapman reflects on the cost of his collaboration: “Story becomes belief, belief makes action, action creates reality.” He watches elk at a salt lick and envies their present-mindedness, recognizing that his desires—for the Tree, for Nathaniel’s approval—are driving the same destruction he half-resents.

Chapman’s complicity reaches a crisis when the three witches, now protector-furies of the land, confront him in chapter 44. They have “shaken off the myth of their birth” and become “furies, whose anger is provoked by every clear-cut, every burn.” The witches force Chapman to see that even his non-violent planting has contributed to the displacement of species. He protests “I’m no killer,” but the narrative undercuts his claim. Later, in chapter 47, Chapman attempts to escape his identity by cutting off his horns—a physical act to shed his faunish story—but by then the damage to his human relationships is irreversible. He flees the Worth family, becoming a lonely wanderer recognized only as the legend “Appleseed.” The chapter ends with an ambiguous choice: when a young farmer asks if he is Appleseed, Chapman can say yes or no. “No matter what story he chooses,” the text suggests, he will eventually “forget enough to make himself believe he’s earned it.” This moment captures the novel’s skepticism: stories can be chosen, but they also rewrite themselves around the chooser.

C-433 and the Far-Future Epilogue: A New Story?

The novel’s third major narrative strand, set centuries later, follows the cloned being C-433. In chapter 34, C approaches the monolithic structures, guided by the voice of O. He chooses to push forward despite the risk of death, saying: “I chose this life. Because I choose it still.” This act of choice echoes the first faun’s unfulfilled desire for agency, but here the choice is explicit. C encounters two pale green ghosts—a horned faun and a floating nymph—who represent the persistence of past stories. The epilogue (chapter 50) describes the great Tree planted outside the Mountain, left to grow untended for millennia. The ghosts eventually fade, accepting that “the new hope was never meant for them.” The forest that emerges is “not an orchard of human want but a forest set free, a forest endlessly desiring to plant itself a world.” This ending offers a post-human story, one in which human (and faunish) desire is no longer the driving force. The machines fail, the monoliths crumble, and the Tree’s apples fall, releasing seeds that will grow without design. Yet even this new story is built on the remnants of old narratives—the Tree was once the object of Chapman’s quest, and the ghosts are echoes of the first faun and the nymph. The novel suggests that while stories can be transformed, they cannot be entirely escaped.

Complexity and Contradiction

Appleseed does not offer a simple moral about storytelling. On one hand, the witches’ intervention in the first faun’s myth shows that narrative can be broken, but the breakage comes too late to prevent harm. Chapman’s story-making—his Tree of Forgetting, his acceptance of the Appleseed legend—enables him to endure his loneliness, yet it also blinds him to his environmental complicity. The epilogue’s self-willed forest is beautiful, but it arises only after centuries of destruction and the disappearance of consciousness. The novel also complicates the idea of “free will” inside stories: the first faun had no agency until the witches acted, but even then his later life is shaped by regret. Chapman chooses to cut his horns and later to accept the legend, but those choices are themselves shaped by the stories he inherited. The book’s final chapter is a publisher’s imprint page, a metatextual reminder that even this mythic narrative is embedded in commercial reality, forcing readers to reflect on the tension between the novel’s environmental themes and the corporate infrastructure that enables its publication.

Symbolic Threads

The central symbol of apples and seeds (linked to /books/appleseed/symbols/apples-and-seeds/) represents the potential for new stories. Each apple contains seeds that could grow into many possible futures, but those futures are also shaped by the desires of the planter. The Tree of Forgetting ( /books/appleseed/symbols/the-tree-of-forgetting/) is Chapman’s personal myth, a story he uses to imagine escape from his hybrid identity and his past. The three witches ( /books/appleseed/symbols/the-three-witches/) function as editors of myth: they cut the first faun from his story and later confront Chapman as furies. Their actions demonstrate that stories can be revised, but only by external forces. Characters like Chapman ( /books/appleseed/characters/chapman/), Nathaniel ( /books/appleseed/characters/nathaniel/), and C-433 ( /books/appleseed/characters/c-433/) each represent different relationships to storytelling: Nathaniel uncritically inherits the story of dominion; Chapman struggles to revise his; C-433 actively chooses a new direction. Even the prologue’s faun at the cider mill (from the novel’s opening) is a figure driven by a hope for “the Tree,” a story that sustains his labor despite the rot around him (outline chapter Prologue).

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the first faun’s experience of mythic time differ from Chapman’s linear experience? What does this contrast reveal about the novel’s view of stories?

In mythic time, the first faun lives all events simultaneously, repeating his crime and death endlessly. The witches’ intervention forces him into linear time, where he gains free will but cannot undo the past. Chapman lives in linear time from the start, yet he too is trapped by the stories he tells himself (the Tree of Forgetting, the Appleseed legend). The contrast suggests that stories impose repetition regardless of temporal structure; linear time does not automatically grant agency.

2. In chapter 6, Chapman reinterprets the Garden of Eden as a “Tree of Forgetting.” What does this revision reveal about his desires and his self-perception?

Chapman wants to forget his faunish nature—his horns, his hybridity—and the guilt of his complicity in Nathaniel’s project. The Tree of Forgetting would allow him to become “as ordinary as his brother.” His revision shows that he uses storytelling to cope with an identity that feels split between beast and man, and to avoid confronting the harm he has caused.

3. Why do the three witches appear differently in the first faun’s myth versus Chapman’s story?

In the first faun’s myth, the witches are fates who cut him free from the story. In Chapman’s time, they have become environmental furies, protecting the land from human destruction. This shift reflects the novel’s argument that myths evolve to meet new contexts: as the threat changes from individual violence to ecological devastation, the witches’ role changes from narrative editors to guardians of the non-human world.

4. Examine the epilogue’s “self-willed forest.” In what ways does this ending represent both a break from and a continuation of earlier stories?

The forest breaks from human desire by growing without plantation, but it descends directly from Chapman’s quest for the Tree. The ghosts of the faun and nymph still haunt the landscape, and the Tree’s seeds are the same ones Chapman once coveted. The ending thus suggests that new stories cannot fully escape their origins; they can only be transformed over immense time.

5. How does the placement of the publisher’s imprint as the final “chapter” affect the reader’s interpretation of the novel’s themes?

The imprint page forces awareness that the mythic narrative is embedded in a commercial system. It disrupts the epilogue’s hopeful tone by reminding readers that the book itself is a product. This metatextual move mirrors the novel’s broader questioning of whether any story—including one that critiques consumerism and environmental harm—can be free from the structures it condemns.