A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
© Kathy Kehrli
The setting: The streets and tenements of Brooklyn, New York circa 1912.
The characters: The Nolan family, poor Irish/Austrian immigrants comprised of: Katie, the proud, self-sacrificing mother; Johnny, the singing waiter with a penchant for dreaming but a lack of ambition to fulfill those dreams; Neely, the younger brother who is both his older sister’s fiercest competition and closest confidante; and Francie, the heroine who rises above her station in life to live the dreams her father never could.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the coming of age story of Francie Nolan, yet it isn’t just Francie’s story. The novel tells the tale of three generations of proud, struggling immigrants determined to pave the way to a better future for their descendants.
For Francie, the poverty-filled streets and buildings of Brooklyn are a way of life and the odds seem overwhelming stacked against her rising above her lot in life. Further complicating the matter is Francie’s alcoholic father, Johnny, who fills her head with fantasies while all the while drowning their fulfillment in his dead-end jobs and liquor bottles.
Despite these odds, however, there’s a shining light in the Nolan household, mother Katie, who exhibits the self-reliance, determination and fearless pride to hold her family together at its seams and set a straight and narrow path to the future. Breadwinner, caretaker and disciplinarian all rolled into one, Katie manages to do it all. And though the mother-daughter relationship is strained at best, it breeds a sense of survival in Francie nothing else can match.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is replete with symbolism, the two most notable examples being a tin can bank and the tree growing outside Francie’s window. Time and again throughout the novel, the Nolan family turns to the precious pennies in their meager savings to help them make it through just one more day. And time and again, the novel revisits the enduring tree, which refuses to die despite mankind’s diligent efforts to squash its growth.
“It grew in boarded up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement.” Francie Nolan is that tree. From the boarded up tenements and rubbish collections she ascends from Brooklyn’s poverty-paved streets to earn an education, achieve professional success and secure a better way of life for herself. Despite fate’s cruelest attempts to squelch her dreams, Francie takes the world by its horns and rides it for all it’s worth.
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