Preview

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Book Review

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
315 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Book Review
I am reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, and I am on page 161. The main character of this novel is eleven-year-old Francie Nolan. Francie’s mother, Katie Nolan, is a hard-working cleaner who solely supports the family. Francie’s father, Johnny Nolan, is a lazy, full-time dreamer with no motivation to pursue his dreams, other than that of which is to drink. Neely is Francie’s younger brother of one year. His real name is actually Cornelius Nolan, and their mother loves him more than Francie, but she tries to treat them equally.
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

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the exposition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, the reader is introduced to the Nolan family. The Nolan family consists of four members living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn New York during the 1900s. Katie Nolan, the mother of Neeley and Francie Nolan has an Austrian family background, where Jonny, her husband and also the father of Francie and Neeley, has Irish in him however both parents were born in Brooklyn, making Francie and Neeley second generation Americans. Both Francie and Neeley were born into poverty and hardship, due to their parent’s financial state. However, in the exposition we learn that Francie is an optimistic young innocent girl, who has yet to experience the world around her. “Serene was a word you could…

    • 1409 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Biology 112 lab 21

    • 556 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Although the book and the movie differ is many extremities, the movie tends to leave out the setting city ‘’Terry Town’’. Also the movie calls the tree the Dead Man’s Tree but in the book it is given a proper name. In the story Bron was thought to be the Headless Horseman. This movie was far easier to follow then the story. Also it was more interesting than the story in my opinion or it could just be that I enjoy anything with Jonny Depp in it. “The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the back of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very…

    • 556 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the essay “Good Oak” in part one of A Sand County Almanac, Leopold is supplied with wood from an oak tree to warm himself on the cold winter days and nights. One night the Oak is struck by a bolt of lightning and it is decided by Leopold and other woodsmen to remove the damaged tree. As Leopold and the other men cut through the tree they witness the same history experienced by the Oak. They cut through the rings and go backwards into time. Each ring represents one year the tree stood tall. I choose this essay not because of a personal experience, but because the essay inspired me. While I was reading the many essays throughout the book this one always stuck in the back of my mind. I responded well to this essay because of the way Leopold…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    After spending several hours walking around the Harn Museum of Art and looking at all the galleries and exhibits, I chose to write about two photographs. The Tree #36, Martha’s Vineyard by Aaron Siskind and Photo 13A in the Ocean Details series by Joni Sternbach. The Tree #36, Martha’s Vineyard is a 14x11 inch black and white print taken in 1973. It is an abstract expressionism photo.…

    • 469 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "Sky High" Hannah Roberts

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Paragraph 5 brings upon the change of the end of her childhood past. Roberts emphasizes her last exhilarating, earth spinning ride upon "the best climbing tree in the…

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The setting of the forest is a microcosm for the world where there are extremes of good and evil particularly at the time in which the novel is set. In chapter 1 of the novel the scene is set on a very idyllic estate,…

    • 1138 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith depicts how a young girl struggles between following her mother’s rules or making her own decisions. Smith uses mature diction, for example, how Francie asks for forgiveness from her mom and admits that she was wrong, which many kids her age aren’t capable of. The sophistication constantly reiterates how Francie is being forced to grow up and make choices that no 14 year old should. Francie desperately desires to go back to school, but her mother wants her to continue to work and support the family with her income.…

    • 244 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ur Mom.Com

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Tree- In the beginning of the novel, Gene describes the tree as a “huge lone spike” or an “artillery piece”, but when he returns back to Devon years later, it looks little and unintimidating. The tree is a symbol of carefree happiness and fears of the boys growing into men, and in time men can leave those worries behind.…

    • 664 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The setting of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, NY between 1900-1918. In the exposition, 11-year-old Francie Nolan is introduced as the protagonist, of the coming of age novel. Her family lives in the poor areas of Brooklyn where she is raised and has a close connection to the “Tree of Heaven”. The text illustrates, “For Francie, Saturday started with a trip to the junkie. She and her brother, Neeley, like other Brooklyn kids, collected rags, paper, metal, rubber, and other junk and hoarded it in locked cellar bins or in boxes hidden under the bed…Paper wasn’t worth much. They got only a penny for ten pounds. Rags brought two cents a pound and iron, four. Copper was good—ten cents a pound” (Smith 7). This…

    • 302 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The title of this poem is " The Black Walnut Tree" by Mary Oliver. The reason why I choose this poem is that I can relate to it because it's about family heritage and how we grow apart by allowing are foolish decisions gets the best of us. In this poem it was based upon betrayal, sadness and they were also faced with financial difficulties. Let me give you the insider of the poem, the tree symbolize hope and life the branches represent the family and how its structure. The walnut is the fruit that represent new life because as we mature in life we blossom into something magnificent that we often learn to cherish and understand what life has to offer us. Black represent sadness and depression color.…

    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story begins on a cold December morning, and just as quickly we are made aware that there is an old black woman “coming along a path through the pinewoods.”(1) Basically, what the author does in this article is review what other critics have said. The first critic he talks about is Neil Isaac; he manages to conclude that the whole story is suggestive of a religious quest. Like for an example the parting of the red sea, and when she steals the nickel and a bird flies by she feels like God is watching her.…

    • 96 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jeffery Goldberg, an American Jew, traveled to Israel in the late 1980s. Like many other Jews, Goldberg came to Israel with the belief in zionism. Zionism is extraordinary important to his life, because it leads his path to Israel, his decision to join the IDF, and his mindset towards the Arabs. The way that Goldberg shares his story is through snippets of time; the setting changes periodically from from his early experience in Israel, his childhood, and times he spend in the prison talking to Rafiq. Rafiq is a dynamic character to the story because he clashes his Arab opinion with Goldberg’s Jewish opinion. Nonetheless, there is a sense of communion with each other and friendship emerges. The three areas I find most important about analyzing Goldberg’s story is his personal experiences and how that transformed his understanding of zionism, his connection with Rafiq, and the book’s similarities and differences from The Lemon…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    ‘He stood staring curiously at this tree, recognizing it for that which he noticed from his window. It was covered with young blossoms, pink and white, and little bright green leaves the sunlight glistened. Mr. Nilson smiled; the little tree was so alive and pretty! And instead of passing on, he stayed there smiling at the tree. "Morning like this!" he thought; "and hear I am the only person in the square who has the --- to come out and---! '(Page 74, paragraph 8).…

    • 2175 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trees

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In fact, this short tale of an old tree dispatched—which is now an old story—has many versions. I cross-date five predominant chronologies, joined at their source like five needles bound in a fascicle, but diverging toward their ends: (1) Curry recounted a passive narrative for a scientific journal, of the tree as WPN-114, numbered and measured specimen; (2) Darwin Lambert, with other advocates of a Great Basin National Park, knew this tree by the name of Prometheus, and he wrote of it for Audubon as the “oldest inhabitant of the Earth,” martyred for its species; (3)…

    • 516 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Shameless Selfie

    • 1147 Words
    • 3 Pages

    I am a tree. Colors changing and ever flourishing. Planted and rooted into this silly place we call earth. I was born in the shady town of Bennington Vermont. Small, quaint and smothered in trees. Hazy green sugar maple leaves scatter the ground. My leaves first saw sunlight on a pale day in November back in 1967. Life was simple. Days were filled with warm kisses of sunlight and sweet tea. Mom made the best sweet tea. There were many adventures to be had and places to be discovered. As a small sprout I was weary of the road less traveled. I wanted boundaries and fences; God only knows what demons could be living on the unfenced land. I was afraid. But dad showed me the light. He was the reason for my Wanderlust. The things some strangers called a phase. I was consumed with the desire to travel.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays