The Giving Tree is a contested book. If you haven’t read it before, you can see an animated version here.
A lot of people don’t like the message it sends, so much so that if you do a bit of googling you can see people rewriting the ending and revising certain pages.
Adam Grant and Allison Sweet Grant wrote in the NY Times about their dislike of the book.
The book’s own editor thinks “it is basically a book about a sadomasochistic relationship.”
Then there are its defenders, like Freddie DeBoer, who think the book actually has a fine lesson to impart in illustrating the beauty of unconditional love that expects no reciprocation on the part of the recipients of that love.
I’ve read a religious angle on the tree’s actions that sees the tree as a metaphor for Jesus, who died for the sins of the humans he loved.
I think these lenses are interesting, and one of the things that makes this short book so terrific is that it inspires so many different readings of it. I’d like to now offer a reading of the book that I haven’t seen anywhere else, and that specifically explores the parent-child relationship.
Who is Actually Taking Here?
The tree gives. And the boy takes. This is the common interpretation of this book. As Shel Silverstein would say when asked about the book, “It’s just a relationship between two people; one gives and the other takes.”
But I see two takers here, and only one of them is old enough to know better.
The tree also takes in this book. She “takes” her happiness from her relationship with the boy. The whole reason she “gives” is precisely in order to get the feeling of happiness that comes from seeing the boy happy.
I disagree with DeBoer that the tree expresses unconditional love in this story. I think she gives precisely because she seeks her purpose in life through the boy, if unconsciously. The reason the tree gives the boy so much throughout the book-- her apples, her branches, her trunk— is because it is only way she can make meaning in her own life is through this boy’s happiness.
The tree doesn’t stand apart from the boy. Her love shapes him— and not only for good.
Growing Up
Throughout the book, the tree has no life beyond the boy.
When the boy grows up and leaves for periods of time, the tree appears sad. This seems linked to the fact that the boy now has interests that exist in the world beyond the tree.
Yet as the boy grows up, the tree persists in offering the him the same things that amused him as a little boy. She says come play and be happy—yet the man (no longer a boy) understandably says to her that he is no longer interested in these simple things that amused him as a child.
When the tree gives more significant parts of herself away, that’s on her. The tree’s decision to make her happiness entirely dependent on the boy is not the boy’s fault. The tree made that decision.
Here’s where it gets interesting, at least to my mind.
To the extent that the boy uses the tree unfairly, it is perhaps because the tree has encouraged him to do so. The boy takes because the tree has only ever encouraged him to take from when he was a little boy.
The tree is the adult. The boy is just a boy.
If other readers wants to view the boy as a jerk that’s fine. But look more closely at what made him into a jerk. If the boy doesn’t see the tree as a being with needs that he should care about, that’s because throughout the entire book she has encouraged him to think of her that way.
Who Makes Us Happy?
The dynamic at play reminds me of a cartoon that caused some commentary awhile back:
One could argue it depicts a caring parent (the mom) and a selfish parent (the dad).
If so, along the lines of the argument I’m pursuing about the Giving Tree, one could also flip this logic. The selfish parent here is the mom and caring parent is the dad.
Why? Because the dad isn’t linking his emotional state to his kids. In pursuing his own interests, he is setting this kids free in a way the mom isn’t when she links her existence to her kids.
Making her kids happy is the mechanism of her own happiness, and as the kids get older they will notice this “use” of themselves. This can be a lovely thing in the right does. But too much can turn kids into people that abuse this love, such as in the Giving Tree.
This kind of love can also foster a kind of dependence that makes children unable to go out into a world in which no one is giving them peaches or apples or leaves or branches or their trunk.
I’m not defending the father entirely. For the record, I think the most appropriate relationship of a parent to the peach is to sometimes take it for oneself, to sometimes save it for their children, and sometimes to save it for someone else entirely— friend or neighbor.
All I’m really trying to do is establish that there is more complexity to this idea of unconditional love.
I think it’s important not to be completely selfish, and it’s also important not to be so completely altruistic to the point that we derive all of our own happiness from the state of others.
Parents who believe in the unconditional love model should really look at how the boy and the tree turn out in The Giving Tree, and perhaps reflect on whether both of them have truly benefited from the way love was expressed in the story.