I’ve not read the story in many years, but how you describe it certainly makes it sound misandristic.
The male character is portrayed as a jerk, a taker who is never satisfied. He is also shortsighted and cruel.
The female character is a saint, giving and giving and a wonderful person (well, tree) all around. She is selfless and caring. She loves too much.
This is obviously a parable about the male (taker/raper) and the female (giver/nurturer) and how they interact. It promotes the view that men are selfish louts, while females (represented as a tree, a symbol of Mother Earth, the nurturer) are victims of their own kindness.
Haven’t read “The Giving Tree” and probably never will now. I just want to interject that “The Velveteen Rabbit” has been misrepresented. The boy did not throw the rabbit away; it was burned on doctor’s orders.
Huh? I admit that we seem to only own the condensed version of Velveteen Rabbit, but isn’t the toy “thrown out” (taken to the garden to be burned) because it is covered with scarlet fever germs? What were they supposed to do–keep the toy and risk infecting someone else? I don’t think that it was the Boy’s choice to get rid of VR–the doctor ordered it to stop the spread of disease.
The Giving Tree, on the other hand, has always disturbed me as well. The tree seems, well, rather pathetic.
Damn, rowrrbazzle beat me to it. I just about collapsed laughing when I heard Dr. Leo “love, love, love!” Buscaglia read the story and then condemn it as “sick,” which I agree that it is.
I don’t understand this OP Fenris. How can you rant about misogyeny being the only interpretation for this story when you can’t even recall whether the tree was female or not? Whether it was or not is irrelevant at this point. That you didn’t know already means you’re making the assumption that it was and then using that assumption to justify your beliefs.
Now, assuming that the tree was “female,” why can’t we take BlackKnight’s interpretation as what Silverstein was getting at: the female refers to mother nature.
Further, the boy symbolizes human beings in general. We, as a society, take and take and take without ever thinking of the consequences, without ever saying “thank you,” and without ever accepting responsibility for our actions.
This is not a poem for Ike Turner, this is a moral lesson that Ralph Nader has framed and placed above his mantle next to The Lorax.
And as long as we’re talking about this, what about Robert Munch’s Love You Forever? I always thought it was innocuous, but then I realized: what the hell is this woman doing climbing into her adult son’s room at 3:00 AM and fantasizing he’s a baby?
What kind of dysfunctional screwed-up boundaries does this family have?
<<And as long as we’re talking about this, what about Robert Munch’s Love You Forever? I always thought it was innocuous, but then I realized: what the hell is this woman doing climbing into her adult son’s room at 3:00 AM and fantasizing he’s a baby? >>
Ehh, every time I go home for a visit, sometime during the evening one of my parents will say something like “Did you remember to brush your teeth yet?” Now, I’ve been brushing my own teeth for a long time; without being nagged since I was about 12. But they still say it, and then we laugh.
Lately, with the whole Chandra Levy thing, my parents have been calling me every night. I’ve been living on my own for eight years, and I have a housemate that’s a bouncer at a club. But I’m still my mom and dad’s little girl, and for many years, their job was to be my safety. When I had a freak standing on my apartment’s balcony, my father drove up that night and spent the night on my sofa, and talked to my apartment manager with me the next day.
My mom would do that thing in the book. And we’d both laugh. Unless, of course, I was sleeping in the nude, in which case I’d be really embarrassed and then laugh.
I think maybe my parents miss my being little the way I miss their being who they were then, too. You grow up, but you don’t forget. And I liked “Love you forever.”
I’m with Corrvin on Love You Forever. I was introduced to that book in a teaching workshop and bought it the next day. I’ve read it to both of my kids in the years since and I still cannot finish it without crying. I even sing the mother’s song when I read it.
It’s been years since I read The Giving Tree. But I do recall thinking it was vaguely creepy at the time and it was one book I just didn’t want in my classroom when I was a teacher. It’s supposed to be about unconditional love. But I thought it was more along the lines of “See what selfishness gets you in the end? Serves ya right.”.
I have to admint that I always liked “The Giving Tree” as a melancholy tale with a moral lesson attached and took it much more as Enderw24 summarizes it than as a story of mother and son. (How messed up would you be if your mom was a tree?) I never associated a particular gender to the tree exactly, nor thought it represented a parent…although caregiver–if one had to categorize it–might not be out of the question as an assigned role. I’d say Seuss’s Lorax is a good comparison (or extention) for the way I interpretted Silverstein’s story.
A) I didn’t say it was the only interpretation, I said that it was the only one I could see. Big difference.
B) The “IIRC” was a mistake. I had a moment of doubt and put the IIRC in.
**
I’m fine with the tree representing Mother Nature, but if that’s the case then the book tacitly endorses pillaging our renewable resources.
IMHO, the book approves of the boy/tree relationship. The boy has a long, happy life as a result of mutliating the tree and finally, when he’s old and doddering, he still finds a way to use her, by sitting on her corpse. At no point is it ever implied that what the boy did is wrong.
And regardless if the tree represents a parent’s love for their child, a lover’s love for their partner, Mother Earth and her bounty, or even a friend’s love for a friend, the kind of horribly destructive relationship that the two of them had is never portrayed as bad. It’s shown in a matter-of-fact way.
Think of it this way: imagine that the tree had been an old woman, and the kid took her money, her clothes, her house and left her naked in the snow to die (and I might add, without gratitude or even acknowledgement that she was sacrificing anything), and after living it up on her riches spent his declining years sitting on her grave, quite content that he’d killed her and lived it up on her riches.
If the book showed disapproval, or there were consequences to the kid’s selfish greed and the Tree’s pathological generosity, I’d be fine with the story. But there weren’t. The kid lived a long happy life. QUD: It’s spiffy to take until you destroy the giver. This story is miles from the Lorax. Cautionary tales are useful and can be great. This was NOT a cautionary tale.
I still have my copy of The Giving Tree. I am not going to read it and cite it here, because it still makes me cry. To me the disapproval is not in the book for a reason. Silverstein wanted to present children with facts and let the children decide for themselves that the boy is a selfush jerk. The lesson is to not be like the boy. The lesson is to look around us and not take too much from our giving trees or take them for granted.
IMHO The Missing Piece is about relationships. The poster who mentioned it has misremembered the important details. The protagonist is a wedge. The wedge looks for a pacman, a circle missing a wedge, to join and roll with. Some pacmen are too small, and the wedge sticks out. Some are too big. One pacman is missing a whole bunch of wedges. One already has far to many wedges stuffed into it. Eventually the Missing Piece meets the Big O(When I read the book now, I am convinced that any sexual reference is unintentional). As the name implies, the Big O is a circle. It needs no one else to roll. Big O tells the Missing Piece that it can become a Big O if it tries. Mp rolls on its own, slwoly at first. Eventually it wears off it edges and becomes a Big O.
IMHO-The Meaning-People often feel incomplete and seek fulfilment through relationships. They hope to fix each other's problems. Either they are incompatible (the wedge is the wrong size). They are unable to help eachother(The wheel is missing too many pieces), or they hurt eachother (The wheel with too many pieces jammed into it The wedges and the wheel have to be very uncomfortable). Only through hardwork can we fix our problems (the wedge rolling until he becomes a Big O).
I also remember the Veleveteen Rabbit having to be burned due to risk of infection. VR helps the boy survive the disease. The boy recovers but VR now carries the disease and must be destroyed. VR dies but is reborn in an improved form. Looking back on this one, I wonder if it was written as a Christian parable. Wilde's The Young King (might be wrong on the title. King has visions, discards fancy clothes and goes to coronation in rags) and The Giant's Garden are openly about Jesus. Lewis' Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe also has a Christian subtext. So, is VR a story of Christ-as-stuffed-toy or am I reading too much into it?
OK, I swear I posted this yesterday, but maybe I am having one of those annoying brain fugues…
Even though it is the doctor who orders the burning of the Velveteen Rabbit, the sad and depressing part, IMHO, is that the boy is isn’t even upset about it. He is promised a trip to the seashore and given a new rabbit, and forgets about the Velveteen Rabbit. He’s completely unfaithful. For me, this would make Doc’s theory of VR-as-JC unworkable, because I think you’re not supposed to go out and get a new Jesus after the old one beomes a Real Rabbit.
I agree with Matt about Love You Forever, but I have noticed that most people have a very strong reaction to this book. They either adore it, or think it’s a complete freakshow. My brother and I are too old to have read this book as children, but I think he would have liked it, because he was the kind of child who said sappy things, such as “When I grow up and get married, can we still live with you, Mommy?” while I was the kind of kid who wanted to know why six year olds can’t have their own apartments.
Another disturbing children’s story is “Tico and the Golden Wings” by Leo Lionni, author of one of my favorite books, ‘Frederick’. Here’s how Tico goes:
<<WARNING, TICO SPOILERS>>
Tico is a species of bird that normally has black wings. However, Tico’s wings are gold. Although he doesn’t behave in any way to suggest this, the other birds shun Tico for thinking he’s better than them due to his wings. He strikes off on his own, cast out from his society, and encounters a series of poor people. For these people he plucks out feathers from his wings and gives the feathers to the people. Miraculously, the golden feathers are replaces by black feathers. Eventually all the golden feathers are gone, he now has black wings, and is welcomed back into the fold again lovingly, now that he’s just like the rest of them. THE END.
<<END TICO SPOILERS>>
What the hell? What kind of message is that? If you have a gift or anything that makes you special or different, HIDE IT! Get rid of it! Do whatever it takes to be just liek everyone else and then you will be loved and accepted. I mean, what the hell?
Legomancer, now that is one disturbing tale.
I asked my mom what the moral is. She said it might be about money, not talent/being different, as in “If you’re born rich, etc.”
Hey! I wonder if this book is what The Rainbow Fish is based on or vise versa. I hate Rainbow fish too, for just the reasons you gave(plus this theme: buy people’s affections), but I’d read it to little ones before the Giving Tree, though.
elfkin, that is exactly the reaction I had to The Rainbow Fish. A friend, who also found it offensive, read it as a treatise on sharing, i.e. you must share everything you have with everyone, not matter what, or they won’t like you.
I, however, read it as a warning that if you are special/shiny/different you must change your body/personality and be just like everyone else, so they will be your friends.
It’s not exactly the message I’m trying to instill in my children.
For those of you who haven’t read The Giving Tree and would like to formulate an opinion without having to go out and buy the book, you can read it online here. It is apparently reprinted with permission and is a frame-by-frame recreation of the entire book, including illustrations.