It has to be satire, right?
I mean, what a fucked-up relationship! The tree is a passive-aggressive martyr and codependent enabler, and the boy is self-centered ASSHOLE.
Does anybody really give this book to kids?
I don’t think it’s supposed to be a satire, or at least I never read it as that. I know what you mean about the little boy, though. The Giving Tree is one of the books I re-visit every year or so and the boy irritates me more and more at each reading. But I think the lesson is that like the tree, you’re supposed to give all to someone you love.
But surely no one expects you to give to the point of martyrdom? It seems like a parody of the stereotypical Jewish mother. “What more do you want from me? You want I should cut off my arm for you?”
I agree. I hate this book. It has no redeeming value and teaches crappy lessons: “if you aren’t doormat in life, BE ONE!” or conversely “take every last advantage you can of someone.”
I agree it’s a somewhat disturbing book, but in the end I also feel it’s from a somewhat less cynical time, when giving (quite literally) everything for someone you loved wasn’t considered a bad thing.
I suppose that’s true, ArrrMatey. But the book has always bugged me. I hate that book, in fact. Maybe because I’m a woman and a mother, and I feel like the tree is supposed to be the mother to the boy (always have, since before having kids myself). She is, right? And so the message to me is, take yourself apart for people you love, and be happy when they come visit you on very rare occasions, but don’t expect gratitude or anything nice like that!
And you know, in reality, I expect to give a lot for my children and am happy to do so; I’m just not going to obliterate myself in the process. Well, unless I throw myself in front of a moving train to shove them out of the way. Wouldn’t that give them guilty nightmares and therapy fodder! 
Just out of curiosity, how do y’all feel about Wilde’s The Happy Prince?
All right, that’s enough Tree bashing. Have none of you comprehended the message of the Giving Tree? It is clearly a story of unconditional love. The tree gives up whatever she can despite the fact that she cannot expect reasonable compensation from the boy.
Furthermore, an analysis of the Tree clearly indicates that she was no “passive-aggressive martyr.” She never mentions her disappointments to the boy. A martyr would definitely make some mention of her sacrifice as the boy carts away a truckload of her branches. A more passive-aggressive tree would have tried to use her gifts to get something out of the boy. While the Tree does invite him to play, we never hear her whining “Oh, that’s all right Boy. You just cut down my trunk and go have fun with it. I’ll just wait here and continue being a rotting stump. As long as you’re happy.”
(I engage in hyperbole, I know. Still, I will require a specific instance from the text where the Tree was exhibiting passive aggressive behavior before I accept this.)
So does loving the boy make the Tree a “doormat”? Perhaps, but I view both the Tree and the boy as participants in a transaction. The boy received a bunch of gifts from the tree. In return, the Tree received the knowledge that the boy was happy. Since the text clearly states that this knowledge made her happy, I don’t think she was too shortchanged by the deal. Certainly not enough to bring her up to doormat status. I don’t think the Tree deserves any of the ridicule she’s getting in this thread. Leaf the tree alone.
But I agree- the boy is an asshole.
Don’t know about this coming from a “less cynical time”; it was written by the guy who wrote these lyrics:
[ul]Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother’d had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old,
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: “My name is ‘Sue!’ How do you do!
Now your gonna die!!”
[/ul]and
[ul]It took seven months of urgin’
Just to get that local virgin
With the sweet face
Up to my place
To fool around a bit.
Next day she woke up rosy,
And she snuggled up so cozy.
When she asked me how I liked it,
Lord it hurts me to admit,
I got stoned and I missed it.
I got stoned and I missed it.
I got stoned and it rolled right by.
I got stoned and I missed it.
I got stoned and I missed it.
I got stoned… oh me… oh my.[/ul]and[ul]And ever since my Masochistic Baby went and left me,
I got nothin’ to hit but the wall, oh no…
Nothin’ to beat but the eggs
Nothin’ to belt but my pants
Nothin’ to whip but the cream
Nothin’ to punch but the clock
Nothin’ to strike but a match.[/ul]and[ul]She fumbles and stumbles
And falls down the stairs,
Makes love to the leg of the diningroom chair.
She’s ready for animals, women or men.
She’s doin’ quaaludes again.
[/ul]and[ul]At the age of 37
She realized she’d never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair.
So she let the phone keep ringing
As she sat there, softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she’d memorized
In her daddy’s easy chair.
Her husband is off to work,
And the kids are off to school,
And there were, oh, so many ways
For her to spend the day:
She could clean the house for hours
Or rearrange the flowers
Or run naked through the shady streets,
Screaming all the way! [/ul]and[ul]We gotta lotta little teenage blue-eyed groupies
Who do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian guru
Who’s teaching us a better way.
We got all the friends that money can buy,
So we never have to be alone.
And we keep getting richer,
But we can’t get our picture
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.[/ul]and[ul]I only wish they’d drop the bomb tomorrow
To teach you a lesson for runnin’ away from me,
And then I’d helter-skelter.
To our cozy family shelter
And I’d lock you out and throw away the key…
I’d be on the inside eatin’ up both our rations
While you’d be on the outside gettin’ thin
Yellin’ and a-screamin’ while you’re catchin’ radiations,
But I’ll never never never never never never
Let you in![/ul] . . . etc.
Still disagree, Fabio. The tree’s a martyr: she’s happy not only because the boy’s happy, but because she sacrificed all to make him happy. She’s a masochist; a professional victim.
I doubt it. The book clearly states that the tree was happy before she sacrificed a single thing.
Here’s .02 from the children’s librarian.
I think you can read “The Giving Tree” as a sort of cautionary tale, if you read it as the boy’s story and not the tree’s. The tree is happy for the sake of giving…and the boy, who only takes, never really seems happy or satisfied. As a man, he wants a wife and family, but when he next visits the tree years later, he wants to build a boat to sail away, being “too old and sad to play.” Maybe the story’s telling us that anyone who does nothing but take will never be happy.
And as for the ending…the old man had to know by now the tree had nothing left to give. But he’s finally ready to give the tree the only thing she ever asked of him…companionship. And maybe, in this, he can finally find contentment, too.
Just wanted to pen in to say that though I knew of many of the child-oriented workds of Shel Silverstein, I had no idea he’d done the adult work he had until lissener’s lyric list above sparked me into doing some googling. Very impressive man, that Shel.
But I do agree about the Giving Tree. “Twisted” about nails it.
This book is a terrible, terrible, terrible book.
The fact that it is a classic mystifies me. The fact there are morons out there that think Harry Potter is evil but read and like this book, just baffles me.
The tree is co-dependent. The kid is a spoiled little snot who takes and takes and takes and takes and takes without ever giving back and drives the tree down to nothing.
The Tree is a martyr , martyrs don’t ask for anything back. They suffer silently because " it is what parents do for their children."
No.They.Don’t.
Real parents with real backbone do not have a revolving door into their house to allow a child/ren to come waltzing in to ask for things over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Real parents give their kids parameters and say, " I rescue you once because it was a mistake/bad judgement call on your part. The next time, you won’t be so lucky." Real parents let their kids learn from their mistakes.
It should be banned as much as the Disney Co-Dependant Princess Collection should be banned.
It encourages a mindset of enabling and dependancy instead of helping people to independence and thinking for themselves.
I can honestly say it is one of the worst books in print for children or adults. It is vile beyond description and it nearly makes me vomit in pure frustration whenever I see it as it is a blazing reminder of certain people I know who are afraid to grow beyond a specific mental age.
I’m with Hermione. I always thought the point of the book was to make you hate the boy so much that you’d resolve never to be like him. I sure as hell wanted to smack that kid the first time I read it, and I think I was only 6.
Perhaps you’re right Hermione, but as a child reading that book, I just wasn’t intellectual enough to get it. I just felt awfully sorry for that poor tree.
Mom read that book to me when I was a child and I just cried and cried. Poor mom. She thought she’d have a nice evening reading to her daughter and I just ended up a wailing snotty mess!
I hated this book when it was read to us in elementary school. Even then I thought it was pretty much horrifying and incredibly sad.
I remember this book came up among some friends and I a couple years ago and we all agreed it was a completely twisted, depressing as hell book
Geez Louise, you guys are trashing one of my favorite childhood books! :mad:
I first read the book when I was 8-9, and I could not fathom how anyone could get through it without hating the boy and really feeling sorry for the Tree. The thought never occured to me that some people might think this was encouraging being an abusive lout or an unconditional punching bag. I always became really sad by the end, and vowed that I would never become that crappy little boy.
I think what makes The Giving Tree so effective is that it doesn’t really beat you over the head with a message, like children’s picture books are apt to do. Instead it throws this sickening relationship at you, and lets you decide how to react to it. It is a children’s book that got me (as a child) to think a little bit beyond myself.
I’d much rather they make this required reading than stuff like Cinderella…
What’s wrong with Cinderella? Or should I start a new thread…
I think lissener has a really good point.
For years, parents have placed their children’s imaginations in the hands of people who they probably would regard as relative degenerates:
Playboy writer Shel Silverstein (whose words to the poetic epic “the Smoke-off”, about a marajuana-rolling contest, I didn’t see in your reprinted lyrics, lissener);
Shining Time Station (Thomas the Tank Engine), starring either Ringo Starr or George Carlin, well-known drug-users both;
Pee-Wee Herman, whose original HBO special with The Groundlings should have left no one with the impression that he was to be taken at all seriously as a children’s host, not even taking into consideration his extra-curricular activities;
the Bananas in Pajamas, who, according to their own theme song, are “coming down the stairs”, and “going down in pairs”;
The Smurfs, Barney and the Teletubbies, who are obviously products of writers’ bouts with the DTs.
And let’s not even talk about Davey and his (drug-induced?) delusional conversations with his dog Goliath…
I could go on and on…