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
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