This week I choose to do two paragraphs of the alternate “week two” option (Conflict Analysis) and one paragraph of predicting. My prediction has to do with the Tree of Heaven and how I believe it will be a significant theme throughout A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I find that there are two main conflicts in this novel. Person versus person occurs in multiple situations. I feel two of the prominent ones are Katie versus Johnny and Katie versus Aunt Sissy. Another conflict I recognize is person versus society, which is present in Francie versus society.
The book begins with the description of a tree in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on a summer afternoon in 1912. “The one tree in Francie’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas. Some people called it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts” (Smith