Grammar Police Officer

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Note: this entry has spoilers, so if you haven't yet read the book, go read it before you read this.

This is the story of Francie Nolan, the daughter of two Irish-American Brooklynites. She was born in 1898 and grew up during the beginning of the century.

It's not really one looong narrative, but more a series of vignettes or snapshots that show us all the interesting facets that make her who she is.

First we find out about a typical Saturday for her and her brother Neeley (short for Cornelius). They have been collecting junk all week long and drag it to the junk man, who pays preset prices for rags, tin, copper, and other stuff like that. It's Francie's job to take the junk into the junk man's barn, because if she doesn't flinch while he pinches her botttom, she gets an extra penny.

The family pinches pennies, literally. They have a secret bank, made out of a tin can a nailed to the floor of the closet, that each family member puts half thier earnings into. The father, Johnny, is a singing waiter and he tends to spend most of his money on drinks, so the bank is a secret from him.

He tries to be a good father but he was too young when he married and was totally unprepared for fatherhood. When Francie came along, Johnny suddenly was responsible for a child, and that dragged him into his cycle of drinking.

Francie's mother's family was a strange and difficult place for Katie to grow up. Her father was an old embittered man who refused to speak English. The mother refused to let the children speak German, which limited the girls' relationship with their father. This was acceptable to their mother, who often claimed she was married to the devil.

Katie's sister, Sissy, was desperate for a baby, and went from one 'marriage' to another to try to get one. She eventually had 10 children...all stillborn. Katie's other sister, Lena, is also married to a dreamer, but unlike Katie's husband, Willie is silly and impotent. Nobody in the family laughs about Johnny, but Willie is the family's standing joke. Francie is part of this group of women who gossip and philosophize out loud, who take life's hard knocks and make the best of them.

She is also part of her father's family. Johnny Nolan is a dreamer and has an artist's temperament. Francie is an artist, a writer, and has a way of looking at her poverty-ridden life that takes that edge off it. She has hope for something better at the same time that she loves Brooklyn and is a child of Brooklyn.

The family totters along, Johnny making money, loving his waiters' union, and drinking; Katie working as a janitor to earn the family a flat to live in; Neeley scraping by in school but better loved by his mother; and Francie going to school, wondering about life, and savoring her moments of beauty. However, Johnny eventually loses his place in his beloved union and finds out about the new baby. This sends him into another tailspin, drinks himself into a stupor, falls asleep outside in the cold, and contracts pneumonia. He dies before Katie can get to the hospital.

This news fractures the family. The children get summer jobs and Francie learns that she loves her new friends (her school friends were all young and childishly vindictive). By the end of the summer, though, Katie makes Neeley go back to school while Francie must stay at work. This way, Francie will struggle to go back to school while Neeley will (hopefully) become a doctor.

Once the new baby is born, however, the family has to decide how to live. They decide that Francie will work the night shift at her tele-typist job and stay in the flat with the baby while Katie scrubs the apartment building early in the morning. Francie then spends her afternoons at college summer-school classes. Time goes by, the children grow more, and the stabbing pain of her father's death becomes a dull ache for Francie. Eventually, Katie receives a proposal (which she accepts) and the new stepfather gives Katie a checking account and Franie and Neeley each college educations. They move out of Brooklyn, but in the closing scene of the book, Francie realizes "you can take the girl out of Brooklyn, but you can't take the Brooklyn out of the girl."

This book is filled with symbols. There is the secret bank, the Tree of Heaven, the shaving mug, and the hypodermic needle, just to name a few. This is a wonderful book--one of my all-time favorites--that I can read over and over and it gives me a new insight each time. I am wiser for having read it.

Here is a wonderful review, with discussion questons.

Posted by at August 2, 2003 04:14 PM | TrackBack