I started A Tree Grows in Brooklyn standing in the middle of the aisle in Barnes & Noble, and by page 3 I found myself sitting Indian-style on a little wooden chair nestled between two Japanese comic book shelves, hovered over the book like a die-hard Harry Potter fan trying to burn through the pages of the latest novel. (*I know you love Harry Potter, Whit. I’m the same way with Lord of the Rings :). But I digress.
I thoroughly enjoyed Betty Smith’s cool, easy way of telling a narrative in a very plain spoken manner. Through depicting what during the early 20th century was an everyday slice of life for the poor, Smith uses the voice of a young but very perceptive girl to truly breathe life and color into her narrative.
Of all the themes throughout the novel, I would like to address the one I have an affinity for: the immigrant experience and the class system by which it was affected. Part of what makes A Tree Grows In Brooklyn so unique is that although these very human experiences happened in some form or fashion to millions of individuals every year, the immigrant experience in New York—Brooklyn in particular—was very different from an immigrant living in California or even the Deep South. There were certain commonalities, of course: the country’s transition into war in Europe, adjusting to the language and the politics of the culture, etc. The immigrants in cities like New York and Williamsburg, Brooklyn faced unique challenges such as tenement apartments, low rents and equally low safety regulations. There was the fact that you had no land with which to farm and cultivate your own foods as in your native country or even the broad spaces of the American West or Midwest. Bread, meat, and vegetables, though staples in many homes were often times luxuries that could not be afforded or had to be consumed in moderation. For example, the Nolan’s plan a weekend to buy meat not because they have a surplus of money in which to splurge but because now they have just enough to where they can afford to include it. These staples had to be bought from the store, and in many cases for immigrants they were recycled. Crusted bread was kneaded into more bread that had to stretch through the week by adding water and a little heat.
There was something unique to the experience of Eastern and Western European immigrant groups living on top of one another and not always seeing eye-to-eye. During the early 1900s all the way through the Red Scare of the 1950s, Irish-Americans were against Jewish-Americans and Soviets were against Irish-German Americans, etc. There was plenty of conflict amongst these groups living in such close proximity, and with that melting pot came some form of tolerance that perhaps more “affluent” individuals not accustomed to immigrant life did not always have.
Betty Smith included some very important undertones to the immigrant experience, one being how immigrant parents and children were sometimes taken advantage of by the school system and made to feel inferior, perhaps because they didn’t understand the language, or more importantly because the teachers out right ignored their entitlements. Simple things like acknowledging a child so that he or she can go to the restroom, or feeling that you can whip a child because he or she will never tell his or her parents both contributed to this broken education system. There was also the issue of ignoring the flagrant problem of overcrowding and being deficient of enough resources to allow each child a chance to learn properly.
Think of the characters you despised most. It wasn’t the store keepers who took advantage of their younger customers (i.e the neighborhood kids) by taking more of their pennies than they should, or the man who hurled a tree at Francie or Neely, or even Katie when at times when she appeared unfeeling towards Francie as a young girl. Why not feel some amount of disdain for these individuals? Because all of these characters understood that making a life for oneself on a limited means was hard. Anything you could do to protect yourself or your children towards the harsh realities of living was necessary. The shopkeepers are living on a fluctuating income, too. Their coaxing more money from a child isn’t out of spite for that child but rather a defensive tactic to preserve their own means of living.
The people I disliked the most was the doctor and his harsh words whose meaning he thought would be lost on Francie, and his weak-minded nurse. It was the teacher who made Francie burn her “ugly words” and declared that someday Francie “would be thanking her.” It was the teachers who, having come from a background of similar poverty, now find it pertinent to look down on their pupils with disdain, and worse, pity.
The grand irony to this novel is that the American dream was being denied to the very group of people—immigrants—who, in retrospect, defined the American dream of creating something out of nothing and having it grow from generation to generation. Smith was wise enough to know that poverty worked two- fold: you can be poor in character and full in your pocket, or you can be poor in pocket and become resilient despite being so. Like the tree that still grew from cement, one could continue to grow through one’s inadequacies, if they were strong enough. Smith didn’t view the immigrants themselves as bad or misfortunate. Throughout her narrative she does a beautiful job of showing how many of the immigrants fought to make it work so that their children didn’t always have to live on limited means.
