HEY, KIDS AND SHEL SILVERSTEIN FANS! COME OVER HERE AND READ THIS!Okay, this some motherfuckin' fucked-up shit right here. The Giving Tree is the straight-up wack story of how this selfish little ass-faced prick kicks it with this full-on saintly tree. Ever'thin' fine for a while, y'all, with the lil' prick all gettin' up in there an' sayin' to the tree, "Yeah, you know you mah bitch," but then all of a sudden, this jumped-up prick go through puberty, get his chia on or some such shit, and so he's off screwin' the skank-ass bitches on the block all damn day and can't spare one motherfuckin' minute for this poor old tree who waitin' for him and lookin' all motherfuckin' sad an' droopy an' shit. So this little punk-ass bitch come up on the tree -- this is a motherfuckin' tree, hear? -- and ask her ['cuz she a sexy-ass lady-tree] fo' some g's. Well, the tree is all, like, "I ain't got no cash, bitch. What part o' me say ATM on it? Mmm-hmmm. I thought so..." And she shoulda held up there, but -- no -- this tree gets all fuckin' benevolent and be, like, "Well, I got mad apples you can go hustle on the streets." So this ass-faced prick just, like, boosts all these goddamn apples an' leaves this tree with, like, its weave all out an' shit. So next, after workin' the streets wit his crew, little bitch boy come back, lookin' all older an' jacked-up, and ask the motherfuckin' tree for a goddamn crib. So the tree like, "Hol' up. Do you even fuckin' see Coldwell Banker all up an' down in here? I think not." But then, being all kindly an' shit, the tree is, like, "But I got mad branches..." And what? She motherfuckin' takes it up back again fo' this fool. Later, another goddamn time, punk-ass bitch come back, lookin' all old an' saggy and wack now, and he like, "Bitch, what you got fo' me now?" "Awww, hell naw," tree says, but then she start gettin' all soft an' shit again an' say, "Why don' you cut down my trunk or some such shit and go 'head and whittle a pimped-out yacht, full-on Hamptons-style?" He, like, "Yeah, I thought so, bitch." And then -- guess the fuck what? -- little shriveled-up, played-out mack come on back wit his ass all hemorrhoided-up an' shit. He look straight-up nasty and old. Tree is, like, "I know you ain't come t'ask me. All's I got is a motherfuckin' stump, you ass-faced motherfucker. How you gon' come back at me like that?" This punk-ass bitch is all drooling and jacked-up and just wanna sit the hell down. What do the motherfuckin' tree do? She say, "Hell no! You motherfuckin' fucked-up fucker, get yo' motherfuckin' ass face out o' here fo' I cut you up good: give you some stank-ass mad tree fungus, motherfucker!" The motherfuckin' end, motherfuckers. Okay, so that's not really the way The Giving Tree ends, but maybe it's the way it should. Some time ago, my ex-girlfriend and, afterward, long-time co-dependent friend gave me The Giving Tree as part of my birthday gift. I loved it, but I hated it, too, because I felt so bad for the tree who is endlessly shat upon by this worthless "Boy"--as he is always known, regardless of age; I longed to console the tree and, maybe a little, to condemn this book as yet another emotionally-scarring "children's" entertainment in the manner of Old Yeller. Don't give me any shit about learning valuable lessons. The only lesson I learned was that human beings are nothing but steaming piles of corn-freckled feces, and that I wanted to found a not-for-profit shelter for unloved trees and rabid dogs and any other nonhuman thing, living or not, which was either unwanted or despised. Having said all this -- and although I don't approve of the treatment of the giving tree -- this book is very moving and very delicate. The delicacy is somewhat counteracted when the reader turns over the book and sees the author photograph of a thoroughly evil-looking Shel Silverstein. He looks like the sort of person who would burn down whole forests of rare giving trees just for kicks. Picture Othello just before he strangles Desdemona. If you -- and, yes, I'm talking to you personally -- are not moved by the plight of the tree after reading this book, then perhaps it's time to go an' check yo'self: are you the givin' tree or are you the motherfuckin' takin' tree? Or are you the sneak-out-in-the-middle-of-the-night-an'-steal-all-my-shit tree?
I was drawn to this book again and again as a child, and I discovered that my three-year-old daughter also wanted me to read it to her repeatedly. The book has given rise to numerous interpretations, and I myself have viewed it differently over time. Some people have a negative, visceral reaction to the book because they believe they are required to see it as a positive and uplifting tale of giving, something they cannot manage to do. These days, we are accustomed to sanitized, upbeat children's tales, but great children's literature has not always spared children the horrors of the world, and it has not always clearly stated its morals; more often, the morals are implied and are absorbed emotionally through the reading. We must not forget that Shel Silverstein was a biting satirist (consider such poems as "Almost Perfect But Not Quite.") It's just like Shel Silverstein to take the guise of a gentle little children's story to skewer the faults of humanity. Yes, "The Giving Tree" is a very disturbing book, but perhaps it's disturbing because it's _meant_ to be.Many Christians (including myself initially) have thought of this as an allegory for Christ's sacrifice. I can certainly see why people think this is a Christian allegory: the tree, like Christ, gives itself entirely for the boy, even to the point of abject humiliation. If it is a Christian allegory, however, it is the disturbing tale of Christ's terrible, painful, continuous rejection by man, and _not_ the heart-warming tale of unconditional love and forgiveness many Christians take it to be. There is no repentance in "The Giving Tree," and therefore no real forgiveness. Some take it as a tale of unconditional parental love, but if it is, it is again a painful tale: a tale of the child who never, his entire life, truly learns to appreciate his parents. Environmentalist read it as a tale of man's selfish exploitation of nature. Feminists regard it as a story of man's subjugation and abuse of woman and woman's failure to stand up for herself (the tree is a "she"). The fact that the book can speak to so many people on so many different levels is, I think, evidence of its subtlety and irony. It really can work on more than one level, if you _want_ it to. But we err, I think, if we assume this is a "sweet" and positive tale. It is sad, but this is almost cathartic, because life, too, is sad. Few readers come to this book expecting the reality and complexity and vaguely drawn morals we get from the harsh Greek myths and the stark Bible stories and the creepy old fairy tales, which were the staples of past generations. Today we expect to encounter cleaned-up, upbeat, didactic stories where everyone learns his lesson: learns how to share or to tolerate or to be nice, a simplicity that is typical of so much children's literature today. But life does not always order itself according to neat storylines in which the bad guys suddenly become good by the third act. Children's literature such as "The Giving Tree" plays a valuable role by helping children (and even the parents who read it to their children) to wrestle with the ugly, beautiful, and complex truths of the world. It helps children to begin processing, very early on, the powerful and often disturbing visceral emotions these truths awake. ---Additional thought: Whenever we are doing a book purge at our house, my daughter tries to give this away, despite repeatedly asking me to read it to her when she was young. I insist on keeping it because the particular copy I have was given to me and signed inside by a childhood friend and because I love the book. When I asked her why she is always trying to give it away, she said, “Because I don’t like it.” She devours Shel Silverstein, and this is the only book to which she would give less than five stars (she gave it one). When I asked her why she doesn’t like it, she said, “Because the boy is so mean and it’s so sad.” And yet there was that part of her, in her younger years, that was fascinated with the sad reality it depicted, curious, and wanted to hear it again and again.
What do You think about The Giving Tree (1964)?
Good grief! These kids books are slaying me. This was another recommendation from a fellow Goodreads friend, and of course, one that my girls and I loved. I read until I started crying and then made my ten year old finish. It's a story that really parallels how a parent feels about their kids...how we sacrifice everything we have, everything we are just to see a smile on our kids' faces. There is nothing you won't do for your babies. And while that sentiment might go right over the kids' heads, they'll understand it one day, when they have kids of their own.
—Duchess Nicole
Had bought this cos I had heard a good deal about it and thought it would make a lovely prezzie for one of my great nephews and took a quick look in the book shop whilst Christmas Shopping yesterday and thought how lovely the drawings were and so wholeheartedly judged a book by its cover or at least its inside illustrations. There is a lovely sense of the movement of the tree and the pages genuinely seem to express the ebb and flow of the tree's life but the words, good grief, the words. This is the weirdest story for children i have ever read. The human character, who is all through the book seen from the eyes of the tree, is called the boy even though he grows and matures and changes from toddler deeply in love with his tree to finally old man self centred and self-pitying. In the course of his life he journeys down through a continual spiral of pillaging and abuse and finally sits, unrepentant and unaware of his cruelty, on the remnants of what once was loving and hopefilled and positive.As a parable or story it can only be interpreted as a song to selflessness if you block from your mind any sense of the behaviour of the man as the tree's continual giving of herself ( and the tree is very evidently female) seems just to feed into the circle of self serving and irrepsonsibility of the anti-hero.Reading it I cannot see what message other than humanity's right to rape and pillage the land can be drawn from it. Maybe it is one of those subliminal stories messaging subconscious calls to responsible stewardship of the land and concern for the wider world into the brains of young readers or listeners before they become hardened to destruction and deforestation but it just ends horribly. The tree is a mishapen stump, the 'boy' a miserable, embittered destroyer with absolutley no self-knowledge.Now tell me I am taking the story too seriously and I will respond by saying what else are you supposed to do. It is heralded as a classic story about love but it isn't. It is a story about a desperately one-sided relationship where one participant is prepared to do absolutely anything to keep the attention or interest of the other callous participant who really doesn't give a stuff and only wants the relationship for what he can cadge, rip and rend from the other's passive and doormatlike persona. Horrible, Horrible, Horrible. No great nephew of mine is going to read this book until I am absolutley certain he will loathe with every fibre of his adorable little being the bastard that is the 'boy'.
—Mark
Easily the most vile children's book ever written, for reasons eloquently stated by about a zillion other posters here. I remember my grandmother, whom I disliked (yeah, some kids don't like their grandparents, it's true) used to push this book on me as terribly DEEP and BEAUTIFUL and something I should really THINK ABOUT. And you wonder why I didn't like my grandmother? (My mother thought it was a piece of shit, too.) Anyway, it's a vomitous book, always has been, and I'm glad there are other people who think that it is. When I was a kid, it was held up as the ne plus ultra of depth and beauty in children's literature. God help us if that's true, but luckily it isn't. If you want a proper story about self-sacrifice that won't make you want to go out and take a poleax to every tree within a five-mile radius, try THE FIRE CAT.
—Laura
