Absalom and Achitophel advice of the double agent Hushai over the good advice of Achitophel. Achitophel, realising that the rebellion is doomed to failure, goes home and hangs himself. Absalom is killed (against David's explicit commands) after getting caught by his hair in the thick branches of a great oak tree: "His head caught fast in the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on" (NRSV 2 Sam. 18:9). The death of his son, Absalom, causes David enormous personal grief. A second allegory in the poem, beginning on line 425, is the
David Tree David Tree David Tree (15 July 1915 in London – 4 November 2009), born Ian David Parsons, was an English stage and screen actor from a distinguished theatrical family whose career in the 1930s included roles in numerous stage presentations as well as in thirteen films produced between 1937 and 1941, among which were 1939's "Goodbye Mr. Chips" and two of producer Gabriel Pascal's adaptations of Shaw classics, 1938's "Pygmalion", in which he portrayed Freddy Eynsford-Hill, and 1941's "Major Barbara", in which he was Charles Lomax. Tree was born in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, the son of theatre critic Alan