The Giving Tree Belonging Analysis
By evaluating the duality of illustrations as both mechanisms for pictorial representation and the act of narrative clarification, the images in Shel Silverstein’s picture book The Giving Tree (1964) subsequently solidify as the dominant mode for communicating the text’s overall themes to the reader. In presenting the pattern of action of personification, and the recurring images of isolation and sacrifice, Silverstein’s illustrations actively portray one such theme of the destabilizing psychological and physiological effects of rape on the female body. As such, these trends ultimately elevate the overall meaning of the work by inherently presenting readers with a socio-political consideration of the destructive consequences of male desire