Yes, and I expect that Norman Bates’ mother was equally happy at the dependence need she’d fostered. Even after she’d been “built into a boat” by Norman, her ghost is just sitting there smiling and rocking, smiling and rocking…
That’s why this book is such a good lesson. I’ll agree that the story is unfortunate, even though the tree was happy in the end.
As said, the focus of the book is the tree. Most times, the tree seems more naïve, than a doormat. But the tree is honest. The tree is innocence itself. The tree is too unselfish to even realize it’s being taken advantage of. All the tree knows is when it gives, it makes it happy, and when the boy is there it makes it happy. We find out, the greater of these, is the boy’s presence.
I was going to say that the adults reading the story understand that it’s not a model for their relationship with their children, but based on this thread maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think it’s intended to be a “cute story” either. There’s definitely a bittersweetness and a loneliness to it, and it acknowledges things you don’t usually see in this kind of story - kids move away, parents get “used up,” eventually they die. So I wouldn’t call it cute. It’s not psychotic either.
And that’s why it so seriously squicks me out. It’s such an unhealthy way to live. If you consistently ignore your own needs, you’re going to be miserable – the life-long kind of misery. So the tree suffers but puts on a brave face because she got this twisted idea that that’s what love is, and the boy is never taught some vital lessons on love and kindness and playing well with others.
Extremely dysfunctional relationship. It’s the sort of thing where you look at it from the outside and think neither of them even had a chance at anything good, because they were both so messed up to begin with, and then they got together and their individual dysfunctions fed on each other.
Wow. Now I’m depressed.
See, that’s just what makes it a good story - it isn’t a pat moral lesson, unlike the vast majority of kiddie stories.
The fact that the story does not have an obvious moment where the kid in the story is “… taught some vital lessons on love and kindness and playing well with others” does not mean that the reader cannot deduce such lessons by reading the story - even if the lesson is ‘don’t be like these characters - rather, learn from them’.
Oh, I’m not denying that. I just don’t think it’s a great kids’ story, because that kind of message is going to be lost on them. It’s even lost on some adults. We read this in class during elementary school, and I remember being very confused – the teachers obviously felt that it was a good story, and I took it on faith that they knew what they were talking about, but I couldn’t figure out how it could be “good” when the boy was so mean and the tree so thoughtlessly taken advantage of. And I was brutally bullied as a child, so it occurred to me that maybe the teachers were saying that’s how we were supposed to treat each other (and the “good girls roll over and take it” message was very deeply ingrained in me. It took years for me to undo that). I honestly thought that I must be too dumb to figure it out. In actuality, I was probably the smartest one in the room. 
I don’t mind it if viewed as a genre-bending, stylized, adult story. But nearly everyone I’ve ever talked to about it refer to it as a kids’ book.
And that, probably more than any other, was a common lesson in Silverstein’s works. Who wants to be like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout? 
Agreed, and the publisher/stores market it as a kid’s book. I think that morality plays are wonderful for children (Grimm’s tales and such), but if it’s for kids then it had better damn well be an unambiguous morality play, otherwise the kids are (demonstrably) going to end up confused.
Trees don’t live forever. If a tree has a soul, for what (or whom) does it yearn?
Humans don’t live forever, yet the Boy always returned to the Tree.
In other words, the Tree was expended but happy.
And by contrast the Boy always yearned.
*If happiness is your goal, prepare yourself for consumption.
If you have no goals, you are a consumer and nothing more.*
It perfectly describes my relationships with women.
(btw I’m the tree, and I’m not really happy)
To be fair, if my teachers had initiated an actual in-depth discussion of the story, I probably would have gotten it even at 8 years old. But they just let it be implied that the tree was “good” for being so “loving” (read: self-sacrificing to the point of pathology), and as for the boy… eh, boys will be boys, after all. :rolleyes:
I’m thinking my teachers didn’t really get it.
THANK YOU! God I hate the Rainbow “pay people to be your friend” Fish. Everyone else thinks it is so cute, but I find it disturbing. I’m glad I’m not alone.
Well, we will have to agree to disagree. I think challenging kids with more difficult works is also okay.
When I was a kid, I sometimes resented being spoon-fed a moral.
I think the thing is that parent-child and lover-lover relationships are inherently different. The type of all-out sacrifice that may be appropriate for one can easily turn into codependent dysfunction in the other. As a lover-lover metaphor, the tree and the boy strike me now as creepy, although the martyr in me does still view it as slightly romantic -______-;
For the parent-child side of things, I also agree that the tree should have set limits and kinda acted as an enabler for the kid’s greedy behavior, but that doesn’t diminish the selfless love and sacrifice either IMO. I think the book shows how this type of self-sacrifice is generally a good thing, but that it’s all too often taken advantange of.
The book doesn’t really creep me out, but it does make you think. I recommend it.
Lost all your wood, huh?
He’s all bark, no bite.
Perhaps he asks them to sit on his stump - and then he’s happy?
I think that confusing kids–really, seriously, confusing them, where they don’t know what to think–is often a GOOD thing. In educational jargon, you’re disrupting their schema, and such perturbation often leads to learning.
I would never read this book to kids and suggest that it’s a happy, uncomplicated story; but I could certainly imagine reading it to kids and talking with them about it.
Daniel
You would be a very good teacher.
No no no, that one is communism for kids. No one is allowed to be better than everyone, individuality will have you shunned, and you must give things up so everyone can be the same.