A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
Written Book Talk by
M. Rose Sarro
“The world was hers
for the reading.” –Betty Smith
A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is a great example of early young adult
literature. A coming of age story, A
Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the life of
Francie Nolan in the early 1900’s. This
book can be difficult to start getting into, but for this reader, it was well
worth it. It should be read luxuriously;
the more time you spend reading at a time, the more rewarding the experience. It’s like a well brewed tea, weak if you
don’t allow enough time for brewing. The
richness of the book draws the reader in; it’s just not the instant
gratification one is used to in this day and age.
The book is
arranged into five books, and the structure lends itself well to the
story. The first book starts the reader
off with a day in the life of Frances Nolan (Francie). It’s the summer of 1912, and a beautiful
Saturday. The reader is guided through a
typical day for Francie and her little brother, Neeley. They are taken along as Francie and Neeley
stand in line to sell junk to the neighborhood junkie. A junkie who preferred girls to boys and
would give the girls extra if they withstood a pinch on the cheek. The details of this day are rich, and the
reader can imagine what Brooklyn was like for an 11 year
old.
Book two is
history, started off from Francie’s parents, Katie and Johnny reminiscing about
the past. We see their first meeting,
and the ferocious way Katie knows, when dancing with this handsome young man
with shining blond curls, that she’d ask for nothing from him but to look at
him, and listen to him talk. We are
introduced to the handsome Nolan boys, musically inclined but weak, and the
strong Rommely women, made of material tougher than stone, but with a weakness
for music and beauty.
“And the child,
Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion
for beauty of the shanty Nolans. … She
had some of her Aunt Evy’s talent for mimicking … She had Aunt Sissy’s love for
life and her love for children. She had
Johnny’s sentimentality without his good looks.
She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of
Katie. …
She was all of
these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the
Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her
and her only --- The something different from any one else in the two
families. … the one different thing such
as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.” (pps.
72-73)
Book three
starts with Francie and Neeley as very young children. This is the longest book, covering a larger
portion of their life. It starts with a
new flat, a place that Johnny states will be his last home. Katie is in agreement that their rent is
covered by cleaning the flats, and Johnny works as a singing waiter. Life is hard for the little family but not
impossible. There is much beauty, in spite
of the dirt, grime, and poverty. When
Johnny does not come home with enough money the family does without. They pretend to be explorers trying to
discover the North Pole. Rations are
made until a rescue is inevitable.
As the kids grow ends become a bit
harder to meet. The magic starts to wear
off. After one of the ‘rescues’ Francie
points out that when explorers suffer, there’s a reason. Something important happens. She asks Katie what the point of being
hungry is. Katie appears to Francie
tired all of a sudden, admitting that Francie found the catch in it all.
Book three is also about growing
up, disillusionment, and the crumbling of the family. Johnny, who has been an alcoholic getting
worse and worse as the ends grew harder to meet, sobers up after finding out
Katie is once again pregnant. He dies a
few weeks later of pneumonia due to sever alcoholism. Ends become increasingly harder to meet. Neeley and Francie both take-up after school
jobs to make ends meet until they graduate public school.
Book four involves growing up even
more than book three. Over the summer
after graduation, both Neeley and Francie get jobs. Francie starts off as a drifter, finally
finding a job as a newspaper reader for a company which could be likened to a
primitive Google. She marks newspapers
for mentions of specific items/topics for a cutter to cut so the company can
ship such mentions to their clients.
Right before the start of high school, Francie is offered a promotion
and a considerable raise, double the money she had been making. She decides to keep it from Katie until the
decision of going back to school.
When it’s time for school to start
Katie asks her children which of them would like to go back to school. The family can get by on one salary, but
cannot lose both. Francie begs her
mother to go back, she wants desperately to learn. Education has been important to her family,
they know that it is the only way to get ahead in life, to become better than
their parents. Neeley doesn’t want to go
back at all. He loves making money and
being a man, he doesn’t want to sit at a desk and be a boy again. Katie decides that Neeley must go back, and
Francie must continue to work. Francie
wants to learn, and will get her education no matter the cost somehow. Neeley won’t.
Book five is about happy
endings. There’s very little more to be
said. It’s one of the shortest books,
about on par to book one. It also spans
a short amount of time, a few days at the most.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
started as an autobiography, but the publishing house asked Betty Smith to
change it to fiction. This
autobiographic nature is evident in the book.
It is vibrant with plot, but not the type of plot that is taught in a
creative writing class. This plot is
organic, it lives, it breaths. Very
little happens, and at the same time, everything in the world happens. It is a story about growing up, history, the
war, poverty, Brooklyn, immigration, alcoholism,
education and more.
It is a
book that should be read at a luxurious pace, not rushed by rubrics or
deadlines. It must be lived, not merely
read. Therefore, this book would not do
well taught in the traditional sense of the word. Reading all 493 pages on a timetable would
inevitably rush some students, stripping them of the enjoyment that the book
can wield. It should, however be
recommended as leisure reading.