The Giving Tree

I'm going to talk about "The Giving Tree" for a minute. Because it's February and because I want to. A lot has been said on this topic before, but I daresay... maybe most of the literature surrounding the book is wrong. Obviously, you can read whatever you want into whatever you want. If you want to read it as an Environmentalist message, a message about parenting, a message about selfishness and narcissism, go nuts. But hold that thought and hear me out. Shel Silverstein himself once said, "It's a story about a boy and a tree. It has a pretty sad ending." And without appealing to the author too much, maybe that sentence is more profound than it appears at first glance.

Let's assume, for a minute, that that's it. The book makes a LOT of sense when you view it as "What happens when two people, with opposing ideals and needs, pursue their own brand of happiness without respecting the other or themselves? What happens when the source of your happiness is giving of yourself?" You're not supposed to be the tree. You're not supposed to be the boy. You're supposed to be both. Some days, you're going to be a tree: asked to give of yourself more than you can, and genuinely wanting to do it even though it may mean your own destruction. Some days, you're going to be the boy (with all the toxicity that implies). That's life, and it kind of sucks a lot of the time.

So instead of viewing it as a simple moralistic lesson, maybe you're supposed to read it and go, "That ended badly. And it very obviously ended badly. How could the boy or the tree have changed the situation? What do you do when you're put in the position of the tree, being asked to give a dangerous amount of yourself for the happiness of another? What do you do when you need something, but taking it endangers the well-being of another?"

Because that's a VERY real situation, and that would've been a much more interesting classroom discussion. And several generations of people given the tools to understand The Giving Tree within the context of how life is messy, people often have competing needs, and approaching problem solving holistically rather than narrowly, might've seen the last decade play out very, very differently.

Though that can be said about a lot of things, and it seems like a lot of pressure to place squarely on the spine of a single, secular book.