The Giving Tree

The Giving Tree is a famous children's story written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. The book is quite spare of text, and as with many children's books, its (equally minimal) illustrations are essential to the progression of the story. Besides being one of the best known and loved of Silverstein's stories, The Giving Tree is also one of the most controversial. It was, for instance, banned from one public library in Colorado on the grounds that it was sexist: the tree in the story is described as “she,” and the child to which she selflessly and unthinkingly gives herself, as a “he.” Thus, it was argued that the story portrayed female exploitation. It has also been criticized on environmental grounds as being anthropocentric: the little boy never hesitates to demand more and more from the tree, which he sees only in terms of the material goods she can give him. In this reading, the boy represents the destructive selfishness of humanity towards the natural world.

The Giving Tree begins by introducing the tree and the little boy she loves. Neither the tree nor the boy is named, and the story is not located in any particular place. These facts may seem obvious because the book is so familiar, but they are worth noting: the contextless vacuum in which the tree and boy interact contains no unnecessary details. All of the emphasis is on the two characters and their relationship.

When the boy is young, he likes to play in the tree, gather her apples, and sleep in her shade. This, we are told, makes the tree happy. This is the only time in the story where the boy and tree see each other regularly. As the boy grows older, he stays away for longer periods. One day, the boy arrives after a long absence, and the tree entreats him to play in her boughs like he used to. The boy says that he is “too big” to climb and play, and wants instead “to buy things.” The tree laments that she has no money to give the boy, but suggests he take her apples and sell them in the city. That will earn him the money he says he needs to have fun. The boy does so, and the tree is, for a time, happy. We are not told how the boy feels.



The boy is gone for another long period, and the tree becomes sad once again. When he reappears, the tree is overjoyed, enthusiastically asking the boy, as before, to come and play in her branches. This time the boy claims he is “too busy” to play; the implication is that he has become an adult. The boy tells the tree he wants a wife and child, and a house for them. He asks the tree for a house, but the tree replies sadly that she has no house to give. He may, however, gather her branches to build a house. The boy does so, without thanking the tree, as usual, and then disappears.

The boy is gone for a long time again, and when he comes back to the tree, she is so happy she cannot speak. She whispers to the boy to come play, but the boy responds that he is too old and sad to play; he only desires a boat so that he can sail away. The tree tells him that she has no boat, but that he can cut down her trunk and use that to build his own. He does, disappearing again. This time, after the boy leaves, the tree is not completely happy – she “was happy...but not really.”

The story ends with the boy visiting the giving tree one last time. After an unspecified amount of time, the boy arrives; the tree tells him that she has nothing left to give him: she has no more apples (but the boy is too old to eat them anyway), no branches (but the boy is too old to play in them anyway), no trunk (but the boy is too tired to climb anyway) – all she is is an “old stump,” useful to no one. The boy says that all he needs is a place to sit and rest. The tree straightens up and offers what is left of her body for the boy to sit on. He does so, and the tree “is happy.” With that, the story ends.



Ultimately, what makes Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree such a moving and, for some, infuriating story is its minimalism: the text and accompanying illustrations are both so pared down and devoid of context that they require the reader to actively participate in the meaning-making process. Their ambiguity makes them an ideal blank canvas onto which readers can, and historically have, projected anxieties of all kinds. However, it is important to remember that this ambiguity itself is perhaps Silverstein's subject: it is possible that the ambivalent and often unequal nature of close relationships generally, rather than the dynamics of a particular type of relationship, is what Silverstein wants to emphasize.