Isolation and community
Besides the obvious importance of cultural imagery from the Cherokee nation and way of life, the second-most obvious imagery is suggested by the situation in which Little Tree—formerly known as Carter—finds himself. The imagery is that of orphanhood, which brings Carter into direct contact with the challenges of life, now fearfully faced alone, under the weight of suffering that loss and mourning have brought him in the loss of his parents. As a child, they were his entire community, and he depended on them. When he finds himself at his grandparents' home, he comes back into community with a heightened awareness of loneliness and life's difficulty.
Education and miseducation
As a boy, he isn't exactly free to do as his instincts desire. He would have rather never left his grandfather's side, nor his grandmother, but because of school, he was forced to. In his opinion, the teachings of his grandparents were true education, because they actually taught him about life, about human nature, about religion and existence, about law and injustice, and importantly, they gave him a name and told him how to maximize his potential in life. In contrast to those lessons, the brainwashing of his Christianizing school was obviously pejorative to his experience of self.
Spirit and body
Carter is not just carter. After his suffering, he is newly awakened to the mystery of existence, and he faces his grandparents on the cusp of their own deaths which come toward the end of the novel, but this time, he doesn't face orphanhood alone. His spiritual education has endowed him with helpful beliefs about nature and reality, beliefs that would be considered spiritualistic or shamanistic by the Christian missionaries whose religious opinions are rather closed-minded, but which would be compatible with world mythology and Christian mystery. Because of their teachings throughout the book, he experiences their death as a trick of nature, suspecting that their spirits were immortal and watch over him even after death. They are not only like the dogs, which also die shortly thereafter; he sees abstractly an imagery of spirit that shows his orphanhood is a mystery.
Death and religion
As mentioned, the duality of body and spirit is experienced in and around the issues of death. The book doesn't point right at religion, except to condemn the obviously hypocritical misinformation of Christian missionaries who were clearly xenophobic and prejudiced, despite the teachings of their own Messiah. Otherwise, religion is not given a specific title in the book. Rather, it is expressed in imagery. Religion is what Carter experiences in his orphanhood, the horror of his parents' death, and the resurrection and salvation that the grandparents bring. When he survives their deaths, he does it with an unseen arsenal of beliefs which help him not to panic, which help him to continue on in life despite the agony of suffering and the loneliness of existence, despite even the bitter cruelty of death. The Education in question is a religious education in response to death.
