The Giving Tree

   


 I’d like to discuss one of My favorite children’s stories with you today.  ‘The Giving Tree’ by Shel Silverstein.

    There are two camps with strong feelings about this book… either it’s loved and treasured or despised and banned.   The simple story written by Silverstein sparks some very heated debates.  If you’ve just listened to it being read it you understand why already.  The tale isn’t your normal happy ending children’s tale.  In fact Silverstein always ended his tales in a bit of uncertainty.  He himself said once about a child having a happy ending, “The child asks, ‘Why don’t I have this happiness thing you’re telling me about?’” 

    I have to agree.  Thinking about it most of My favorite books, stories, movies, etc all tend to have an ending that’s either left open for question or rather sad to most.  I find beauty in reality.  Life doesn’t end with two people riding away on white stallions holding hands as triumphant romantic music plays… life is long and brutal at times.  It’s not always this fairy tale with a happy ending…. We can always find joy in where we are in the moment in something but circumstances aren’t always ‘happy’.

    It’s not written as a useful exemplary tale like ‘’Hands Are Not for Hitting’’ Instead it’s a tale of what people can give and take from each other in a relationship, in a family, or in society as a whole.

    The story itself doesn’t praise the tree nor does it endorse the boy.  They each do the very particular things they do, and say the things they say.  Their relationship is put to us as emotionally realistic, as it is, instead of as it ought to be.

    When the tree suggests, to the grown man who wants a home and family, that he should climb her branches to play would suggest she knows little of the boy she loves.  When as he grows the boy becomes unkind in his actions toward the tree, more and more, his knowledge and understanding of her are shown to be even more limited than hers of him.  They are both flawed and those flaws dictate the path they take.

    I find it beautifully ironic that “Happy” is the last word of the story. The sadness one feels in reading this book so full of the word “happy” is complicated just like the emotion itself.  Each happy alters the happy that follows it.  Through each repetition of the word the language is made more complex until at the end it’s as inside-out and upside-down as the emotion itself.

    After all, what truly is happiness?  What really is love?  Can these emotions honestly be summed up in neat little packages with pretty little bows to pass down to the generation below us?  I don’t think so no.  Happiness and love are complex and deep.  They are too deep to wrap up on a kids story or to tell in a fairy tale.  

The Giving Tree is a disturbing story of unconditional love and a tender tale of the monsters we are.