Thank you, Shayna.
After re-reading it, it strikes me that Silverstein did know what he was doing. The tree is potrayed as a saint, the boy is a monster but no judgement is passed on either one. Maybe he left the message ambiguous to ENCOURAGE critical thinking in the kids who read it, to help them make up their own minds about they should treat people (and trees).
DocCathode: You’re thinking of The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, which was a sequel to The Missing Piece. Captain Amazing was closer.
The Missing Piece is about the circle who is missing a pie shaped wedge. It rolls along, looking for it’s missing piece, but it is hardly miserable. It has time to smell flowers, stop and talk to a worm, and sing a song. It is happy because it has a purpose for its life–looking for its missing piece. It starts finding pieces, some too big, some too small, and finally finds one that fits just right. They join up but now it can’t sing, and is rolling so fast it can’t stop to smell flowers or talk to a worm. It decides to part ways with its missing piece, and once again is happy because it has something to do with its life–look for its missing piece. The story ends with it singing happily.
There are a few messages I’ve always thought were clear here.
1-No one else can make you complete, you must find your own purpose in life.
2-Life and work are about the journey, not the destination.
3-Happiness comes not from getting what you want, but from your attitude about what you have.
4-What we want is not always what is best for us.
The Giving Tree certainly supports many different interpretations about the nature of the relationships portrayed, if analyzed from an adult perspective. We regularly read it in my Children’s Lit course, and the discussions about what the tree actually represents and what the relationship in the story symbolizes can get very heated. That such a seemingly simple text can support such divergent readings makes it a great one, IMO.
But this story is intended for young children, and they simply do not think the same way as adults. I have read this story to/with a great many children (and will continue to do so). When we do a retelling (having the students tell the story in their own words) and do a Q and A, I get very similar responses.
A typical interpretation from the perspective of six-year-old: The tree is a tree. It gives things to the boy because it makes her happy. It makes her happy because she wants him to be happy. The tree is sad when the boy goes away. In the end, the tree and the boy are both happy because they are together.
I haven’t used it with older classes, but I think I might pencil it in for my gifted 5th graders this year to see what they make of it. Any story that provokes such divergent strong opinions has got to be good for developing critical thinking skills.