A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is one of those American Classics that you may have heard of, but never picked up. It is the story of Francie Nolan, an eleven year old girl coming of age in 1912 on the gritty streets of Brooklyn. Francie describes in vivid detail the people, streets, sights, and sounds of Brooklyn from the fire escape of her tenement building. Her father is a waiter who often disappears for days at a time and comes home drunk and penniless. Her mother is a tough, but pretty woman, who spends her days cleaning tenements and collecting extra money in a tin can for a piece of land someday. Francie and her brother, Neeley, struggle through the public elementary school and gather junk on the streets to sell for pennies. Not much “happens” throughout the five hundred pages of the novel, but by the end you have viewed a rich portrait of life and death, the dynamics of a family, the loss of innocence, and the limits of love.

Written by Betty Smith, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is semi-autobiographical. Betty was born Elisabeth Wehner on December 15, 1896, the same date as, although five years earlier than, her fictional heroine Francie Nolan. She was the daughter of German immigrants who struggled through poverty in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. She describes this world with meticulous detail in “Tree,” but often said that she didn’t write it the way it was, but the way it should have been.

I enjoyed the view of Brooklyn from young Francie’s perspective. She is wise beyond her years and observes each event with mature understanding. She describes her family and poverty stricken life without bitterness or regret. She adores her father and realizes that her conflicts with her mother arise out of their similarities. The novel bogs down a little towards the middle with those endless Brooklyn details, but picks up again in the end as Francie starts working at the age of 14 to support her family. Her courage and determination to become self taught and struggle through college courses without a high school degree was inspiring. In the end, she decides to leave Brooklyn, but she is taking with her everything that she has learned from a place of great poverty and great richness. In the tender conclusion, she looks down across the tenement backyards and spies the tree that has been chopped down, dug out, burned, and yet grows again. Then she sees a young girl reading on a fire escape and whispers, “Good-bye, Francie” to her former self. It is not a farewell to the tenements or the tragedies of her life, but to her old illusions and girl she once was.