The Giving Tree

“Cut down my trunk and make a boat… Then you can sail away… and be happy.” — The Giving Tree

Once there was a tree…

Shel Silverstein’s famous 1964 picture book, The Giving Tree, is one of my favorite books despite the back cover¹. At the time, I was probably three or four years old, and I felt really bad for the tree.

And she loved a little boy

What’s sadder is that the tree is self-inflicting all of this damage and no one is there to suggest otherwise. Part of my strongly negative reactions to irrational behavior probably originated from my judgement of the tree’s willingness to sacrifice herself.

And he would gather her leaves

and makes a crown out of her leaves, taking it all for granted. Other people’s goodwill are not innately deserved, but earned. If one turns out to be the boy at any point, it’s time to figure out how to be the tree.

And the tree was often alone

and willing to suffer silently because cutting oneself down to fulfill others seems noble, but it’s just plain stupid. Sure, he’s oblivious, but she never complained either.

So the boy cut down her trunk

1.5 decades later, I feel bad for the boy, who obliviously destroyed what he loved most. Once again, it’s one of those things that you gotta learn the hard way. Although being the tree is worse, the comparison is irrelevant because all people will almost certainly experience both at some point.

And the tree was happy… but not really

In her discontent and sense of completion, the tree ends up pushing the boy away. She believes there’s nothing left to give, and gives up the only way to get anything in return.

I don’t need very much now

Every children’s book needs a happy ending, so we learn that they found out that all along, all they really needed was each other.

And that’s how they spend the last page.

Outside of fiction, the happy ending is that the story goes on; we do not age much within the span of thirty pages, but the price of being able to experience many stories in a lifetime means that the tree and boy don’t always get to remain the original pair².

Footnotes

1. Shel Silverstein’s face is a bit scary for children, so I tried not to look at the back cover. ↩

2. I was originally going to write about buying gifts for my friends in NYC, but after rereading the book and writing a few lines, I didn’t think the typical tone was appropriate. ↩