The Giving Tree 'Vs. The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings'
S***** **m****
3.5.2013
ENG 102
P1 Final
The Giving Tree vs “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”: Use of the grotesque and the human experience.
The commonality between Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, is the exploitation of a grotesque character and the sacrifices they make for the sake of their relationships and situation. Each exploited character represents that gullible and somewhat easily exploitable part of us, that will go to great lengths to keep those we think show us love and acceptance, fulfilled and enticed. By using the grotesque, the reader is allowed to immerse themselves in the amplified personas of these fantastic characters, and their motivation to indulge the selfish, thoughtless, abuse of their resources and basic rights.
William T. Free describes the grotesque in writing as “something playfully gay and carelessly fantastic, but also something ominous and sinister” (Free 216). The boy’s need for the tree and the town’s reaction to the angel gives us a peek into the duality of grotesque behavior. We see them being playfully …show more content…
This is not to say that the boy does not love his tree “And the boy loved the tree very much” (Silverstein n.p.), however, he has never had the burden of reciprocity levied upon him. As a little boy he gathers her leaves and her fruit while using her body for play, but his maturation is accompanied by needs no longer solely dependent upon the tree “I want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?” (Silverstein n.p.). As he ventures out to find his place in the world, his visits are fewer and farther apart; and when he does visit it is to strip her of some other resource. Eventually he returns to his tree, old and tired to claim the very last thing she has to offer, still for his own
3.5.2013
ENG 102
P1 Final
The Giving Tree vs “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”: Use of the grotesque and the human experience.
The commonality between Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, is the exploitation of a grotesque character and the sacrifices they make for the sake of their relationships and situation. Each exploited character represents that gullible and somewhat easily exploitable part of us, that will go to great lengths to keep those we think show us love and acceptance, fulfilled and enticed. By using the grotesque, the reader is allowed to immerse themselves in the amplified personas of these fantastic characters, and their motivation to indulge the selfish, thoughtless, abuse of their resources and basic rights.
William T. Free describes the grotesque in writing as “something playfully gay and carelessly fantastic, but also something ominous and sinister” (Free 216). The boy’s need for the tree and the town’s reaction to the angel gives us a peek into the duality of grotesque behavior. We see them being playfully …show more content…
This is not to say that the boy does not love his tree “And the boy loved the tree very much” (Silverstein n.p.), however, he has never had the burden of reciprocity levied upon him. As a little boy he gathers her leaves and her fruit while using her body for play, but his maturation is accompanied by needs no longer solely dependent upon the tree “I want a wife and I want children, and so I need a house. Can you give me a house?” (Silverstein n.p.). As he ventures out to find his place in the world, his visits are fewer and farther apart; and when he does visit it is to strip her of some other resource. Eventually he returns to his tree, old and tired to claim the very last thing she has to offer, still for his own