The Giving Tree

As I pondered which book has been the most influential in my life, I browsed the shelves in my home and thought back to the classics I read in highschool and college. There are many authors that have challenged and shaped me such as Katherine Patterson, Annie Dillard, Ernest Hemingway, Milan Kundera, Anne Lamott, and Thornton Wilder, but as I reached back further into childhood, one book that stands out and I’ve always considered as my favorite is Shel Silverstien’s The Giving Tree. Let me say upfront, it’s not a warm, inspiring book. I know it is read as a love story, but it’s more of a tragic romance.

A quick summary of the book is that a little boy loves playing under a tree and gathering her leaves, and the tree and boy love each other. As he grows up, the boy has no more time to play, and the tree increasingly gives more of herself for him to use – apples to eat, branches to build a house and finally lumber to build a boat. When he is an old, bent man, he returns to the tree. All that is left of the tree is a stump. Throughout the story, the narrator asserts that the giving tree is happy each time she gives something to the boy but it sad when he is gone.

I’m going to be honest, that boy is a total jerk. He uses the tree, takes all that she has, and expects her to comfort him when there is nothing left for him to live for.

Let’s first look at the story as if the tree truly were a sentient being with agency — as if she has a choice in how she relates to the boy. She is kind, generous, and loving, right? I suppose she demonstrates many aspects of a parent’s sacrificial love, but I think she is likely a very unhealthy codependent who believes she will only be loved if she if giving of herself. She is happy when he’s there, sad when he’s gone, and he always leaves. She’s the ultimate giver who has no boundaries. She’s an enabler (I know, that’s harsh). She’s the mother whose children move away and finds she is an empty shell of a soul because she has not tended to her own being. She’s the one who reflects back to others exactly what they want to see because she doesn’t know who she is without them. The boy on the other hand, has things to do and accomplish. He sees her as a means to move onward and upward in his own life without regard to what she needs. Are any of my Enneagram friends seeing some patterns here? This is a super unhealthy relationship. It’s why I tell my kids to make their own lunches.

This book has always elicited a sadness in my soul and resonates with my fear of growing up and old and my longing for deep connection. It is the ultimate cautionary tale in love and relationships. Through the tree, we see that love cannot be earned, and it’s a fruitless journey (see what I did there?) to give your heart to someone who doesn’t reciprocate the love. I believe that the boy does initially love the tree, but he grows to love himself far more. He gets everything he wants and mostly suffers no consequences for his actions. He would find more comfort in the tree at the end of his life had he tended to her life as well and allowed her true beauty to prosper.

Now let’s look at the story without the personification of the tree. It’s hard to see her just as a tree because so much of the story narrates her emotional state and invitations to the boy. Through this lens, we see the book does the tree an injustice, because really that tree does give. The boy takes, and as he grows up, he only values her for her utility. It grieves me that as most of us grow up, we move away from nature, and in the growing distance, we begin to forget its intrinsic value. Dare I say, we also lose sight of our own intrinsic value. We move into spaces where we believe we must earn or prove our own value, and we do so at the expense of the natural world. Reading the news about how we are rapidly losing forests, diversity and abundance of species, and filling the oceans with plastic bottles, I wonder how long it will take before our “tree” is nothing but a stump.

I was fortunate to grow up in the country and then to major in a field that was connected with the outdoors. I was also super lucky that the first house Joe and I moved into had an old raised bed that sparked this crazy gardening passion in my soul. As I’ve spent more time nurturing our own gardens, I’ve felt a deep satisfaction that slows my materialistic drive to consume. It’s amazing therapy. Sitting still and listening to the bees buzz really does quiet the constant buzz of anxiety in my head. What I find in nature is that my guards begin to fall, and I become again like a child. As young children, we have the gifts of innocence and play. Author Ian Cron defines innocence as “openheartedness without cynicism.”

I have a tendency towards cynicism, and I’ve certainly listened to my share of cynics, but what I’ve resolved in my own life is to give back to the “giving tree”, even if at this moment it is only my small 1/3 acre yard. What I want to say to you is that you don’t have to grow up and move away. As I’ve written about before, you don’t have to become something. Who you are now is worthy of love. You have value, and there is nothing to prove. Tend to those who are tending to you.