The Giving Tree

[prog]

Via jadelennox, I learn that The Giving Tree, one of my beloved books from childhood, has a great deal of controversy around it and is actually reviled by some children's literature scholars, herself included.

I find the controversy both surprising and interesting, but I think this is the first time I've seen a book I hold so dear (there are very few) get attacked like this. I put up a little defense for it in that thread, but seeing all the other commenters pour righteous scorn on it makes me feel queasy, as if all these people were rushing in to talk about how my Aunt Jan was actually a pirate who molested them as children or something. Bad news.

Comments

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Dreadful book. My kids (and I) love Silverstein's poetry, and I bought that book for them way back when. We read it once, and then again a few days later to confirm that it really was as dreadful as it seemed on first reading. The kids were ambivalent about it--did't hate it, but certainly didn't have any special affection for it. I put it quietly away.

The tree gives everything. The boy/man/old-man takes everything. The end.

Yuck.

I never got the tree as feminine, so that part simply sailed by, but really, people who focus on the nominal gender roles as more important than the moral situation are missing the point. Plenty of men have willingly sacrificed everything, knowing that their only monument will be a far away tomb that respresents the remains that were never recovered from the mud.

But the unquestioning sacrifice and acceptance of that sacrifice int the book struck me as morally doubtful then and even moreso now. You don't have to mix the argument up with irrelevant issues of gender stereotyping to see that.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

nicely said. the only disagreement i have is that the gender issues are not necessarily irrelevant. that's not to say the roles can't be reversed and males can't be taken advantage of or sacrifice beyond what's healthy in relationship, but the tree is clearly referred to as "she," so i think it means something.

i think this goes to show that it's wrong on a number of levels, demonstrating the worst tendencies in relationships: giver/taker, male/female, parent/child people/environment. it could be that silverstein meant it this way, who knows? but now it's in the collective consciousness as a "classic" and therefore "good." and it isn't.

where the sidewalk ends, on the other hand, is an exceptionally brilliant work.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I was going to argue that the gender issue is irrelevant because you could swap the gender roles and the story would be just as bad (which is true) but in fairness I think the thing that irritates me about the gender-based analysis is that I have yet to see anyone arguing that the story is bad because it promotes the view that males are fundamentally dependent and incapable creatures (I haven't read the full wikipedia article, so maybe I'm missing that somewhere). If you swap the gender roles you'll see that if the boy was a girl and the tree was portrayed as male, the first gender-based critique that leaps to mind is one about female dependence.

A gender-fair analysis would be quick to make the same point about the boy in the story as written, and anyone who knows college-age men who can't cook a meal or do laundry or keep house knows that the presumed incapacity of men is an important real-world gender issue, albeit not as important as the millenia old traditions of "glory" that have put so many millions of young men into anonymous graves.

There is value in service

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

Like many here, I read /The Giving Tree/ as a kid, but what I took away was a little different that what most have latched on to.

I strongly oppose the reading of this work as a gender study. Not only is that too facile to be meaningful, it's not well supported by the actual book. The reader must bring a world of baggage to manuscript to milk a misogynistic message out of the manuscript. Frankly, I'm pretty tired of criticism that illuminates "hidden" messages of hate in works of art when real examples of unambiguous bile are plentiful. But, each will have his own hobbies.

Silerstein's work illustrates a value that has been pretty well eroded by modern culture: the value of service to others. It may well be that you and I are not comfortable to the degree that the tree is prepare to go to pursue this goal of service, but in other contexts, this is extraordinary act of sacrifice is accepted and often expected. Imagine if the tree were cast as a doctor administering to the poor for his entire life. In old age, he would be poor and probably alone, but his life's goal would still have been achieved. His service, if fully pursued, would use up all of his resources, physical and otherwise. Silverstein's story can also be cast into military terms very easily, where the sacrifice of the tree is lauded as heroic.

To me, the Tree is the kind of everyday hero who is all around us, invisibly doing what they can for the rest of us without waiting for a "thanks."

[dougo.livejournal.com]

The problem I have is with the jump from "demonstrating the worst tendencies in relationships" to "wrong". Are you saying that nothing bad should be depicted in a children's book without unambiguous condemnation of it? I don't think that is what you're saying, but I can't figure out what your actual criticism of the book is about.

My memory of '60s and '70s children's lit (and TV and movies etc) is that ambiguity and nonjudgementalness was the norm, and the subject matter was often dark or sad or just opaque or contrary. But if it is thought-provoking, and gets at some sort of underlying truth, I think it can have merit without having a clear positive moral. The fact that the Giving Tree has been interpreted in so many different ways seems to indicate that it does encapsulate a truth, or many truths, ugly or confusing as they may be.