Patrick White's chief interest throughout his novels has been on 'burnt ones', emotionally damaged people who lead a lonely existence without a lifeline to other lives. He is reluctant to portray his burnt ones as totally destroyed, but seeks to find for them a compensating value that might give their life some significance. Again and again, he portrays the force that supplements or transforms their blighted personal life as a richer life within the imagination. Those who do not or cannot attain a rewarding dream life, a life of conscious fantasy, White tends to endow with a visionary quality. (p. 152)

I use 'dreams' to designate the process of conscious fantasy…. Dreaming is a universal process, but when one's personal life is especially unsatisfactory, the dreams need to be richer, and they occupy a larger part of one's existence. Some form of dreaming—and mysticism itself can be seen as one form of dreaming—is necessary as an outlet or compensation for stark reality. When in The Aunt's Story Theodora Goodman's life in the ordinary world becomes unbearable, she elects a life completely within fantasy. Stan and Amy Parker, although emotionally undernourished, are not so burnt as Theodora; they do not dream so much as she does because they do not need to and also because they cannot, lacking broad and deep experience. Amy dreams more than Stan, and finds in dreaming some outlet for her frustration. Stan, similarly frustrated, represses his impulse to dream. What then is left in compensation to give significance to his life?

Instead of an indulgence in a dream life like Amy's, Stan is endowed by White with a sense of vision. By 'vision' I mean an experience beyond a human level, something mystical. It is noteworthy that Stan's visionary sense is at its highest when his personal life is particularly empty…. The principle of compensation is evident in White's thinking: he endows Stan with a visionary sense because Stan cannot dream to any large extent. Both the dreams that White shows Amy indulging in and the visionary sense that he endows Stan with appear to spring from his unwillingness to abandon these burnt ones to a wholly wasted life. (pp. 152-53)

In this novel White shows considerable ambivalence towards the value of dreaming in making life bearable. On one hand he is saying that because life is disappointing, dreams are needed to give it significance. On the other hand he is saying that dreams are bound to disappoint in that life will not measure up to them. There is bitterness accompanying this dilemma: if one does not dream one is left empty and hopeless, and if one does dream one will be disappointed with the realities of ordinary life. In Stan and Amy Parker White depicts two people frustrated by life, with only a partial alleviation through dreams. Because of their lack of emotional and educational experiences, they are not equipped to dream richly enough to compensate for the drabness of their lives. Further, the figures that their dreams are built on are unfailingly disappointing. (p. 163)

The Tree of Man is a more depressing book than its predecessor, The Aunt's Story. It shows the bleakness of the lives of people who cannot enter the life of the imagination completely like Theodora Goodman, in order to find an alternative or a supplement to the harsh reality of ordinary life. For Stan, who dreams even less than Amy, the prospect of an outlet for his frustration through fantasy is dim.

But Stan is given a compensating sense of vision, to redeem what is otherwise largely a wasted life. His virtues are sterile, being confined to himself; his goodness does not erase his coldness. His visionary streak is only faintly outlined and receives sporadic attention. It is largely lost sight of in the long central section of the novel, but is revived to reach its fullest expression at the time of his death. There are two sides to Stan's visionary sense, his closeness to nature and his closeness to God.

The closeness to nature intimated in Stan is a derivative theme, harking back to D. H. Lawrence. It is not consistently developed throughout the novel, and is of temporary duration…. [The] idea of Stan's closeness to nature is dropped less than a third way through the novel.

Nor is Stan's religious vision successfully conveyed. Stan is not shown as a particularly religious man. Early he prays to God from an emotional rather than a spiritual need: because God will understand him without any need on his part to open himself, something he would like to do to a human being but cannot. The scene in which he visits Lola, Ray's mistress, and spreads enlightenment to her … is one of the failures in the novel: nothing in their interchange indicates 'that he could light anyone with his own darkness.' The Communion Service is likewise obscure, but does not appear to be a transcendent experience for Stan or anyone else. Stan's final illumination is disappointing…. [He] has attained to no greater insight than Amy had already realized during the Communion Service…. If the gist of Stan's vision is that 'One, and no other figure, is the answer to all sums' …, then it is a disappointing fulfilment of his conviction during the Communion Service that 'I shall … eventually receive a glimpse' … and to Lola that 'in the end I shall know something [about God]. What else is there that would be any use to learn?' (pp. 163-65)

From both aspects of Stan's visionary sense, closeness to nature and closeness to God, Amy is excluded. Is she then, as White suddenly charges near the end of the novel, 'a superficial and sensual woman, when the last confessions are made' …? But the human values of the novel go contrary to the mystical intention: Amy is not bad enough nor Stan good enough to bear out a simple opposition of good and evil. Until White's flash of dislike for Amy so late in the novel, he had presented her sympathetically, so that it is hard for us to accept his condemnation. And his criticism of her as possessive … is not vindicated by the evidence within the novel, except in her relationship to Ray. Her search for love and her expectations from love seem reasonable enough, especially in the light of Stan's retreat from emotion. To the child she shelters during the floods she seems no more than kind and reassuring; that whole incident of the child's early morning flight is strange and unconvincing. Stan's religious sense is too superficial for him to be considered a spiritual man. He is so repressed that too little of him as an individual emerges to fit him to his role as a visionary. Contrast him for instance, with the far more articulated visionaries of Riders in the Chariot. White's attempts to elevate him are uncertain and ineffective. Stan is even, perhaps, overshadowed in the book by Amy. His apartness strikes one as isolation rather than special destiny. Must one agree that 'only through absolute alienation from social existence can man have a possibility (no more than that) of visionary achievement'? If that is what White is saying, then one is held back from giving an easy endorsement by discerning too clearly the principle of compensation at work.

If The Tree of Man is a failure as a visionary novel, on what does its greatness rest?… [Its] achievements lie in its depiction of the marital relationship between Stan and Amy; in its portrayal of Amy (next to Theodora, perhaps White's most successful accomplishment in characterization); and above all in its depiction of dreams that reveal deep longings and fears. It is his presentation of fantasy that is White's chief contribution to the English novel. The Tree of Man is surpassed in his work only by The Aunt's Story and Voss—by Voss in the conveying of a sense of vision, by The Aunt's Story in the rendition of fantasy life. Abortive as a visionary novel, The Tree of Man is none the less highly successful in its exploration of the life of the imagination through dreams. (pp. 165-66)