There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Kingsolver juxtaposes the apparent natural beauty of an immense cemetery—white crosses stretching to the horizon—with the unsettling precision of its design. The initial metaphor of a “forest” gives way to an “orchard,” emphasizing human planning, cultivation, and order rather than wild growth. That shift sharpens the moral point: these graves are not a neutral part of nature but the product of human decisions—war, politics, and collective violence—rendered in immaculate geometry. The final line (“unless you count human nature”) turns the scene into an indictment of recurring human tendencies toward conflict and sacrifice, while also mourning the youth and anonymity implied by “dead boys.”