Coming of Age in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn :: Tree Grows in Brooklyn Essays

Coming of Age in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn   Betty Smiths A Tree Grows in Brooklyn presents the problems of a child growing up, the approach path of age when one meets challenges and overcomes obstacles.  The protagonist, Francie Nolan, undergoes a self-discovery as she strives to mature living in the Brooklyn slum despite its poverty and privation.  Thus, Smiths thematic treatment of the struggle of due date has become for the reader an exploration of loneliness, family relationships, the loss of innocence, and death and disease.   One of the challenges of growing up is loneliness. As a small child living in Brooklyn Francie had no friends her age, the kids in her neighborhood that would have been candidates for friends either found her in any case quiet or shunned her for being different. Betty Smith describes on page 106 how just about of Francies childhood days were spent So in the warm summer days the lonesome child sat on her stoop and faux d isdain for the group of children playing on the sidewalk. Francie played with her imaginary companions and do believe they were better than real children. But all the while her look beat in rhythm to the poignant sadness of the song the children sang while walking around in a ring with work force joined. As time went by and Francie got older she began to get to know a different kind of loneliness. Betty Smith narrates her feelings on page 403 Spring came primordial that year and the sweet warm nights made her restless. She walked up and down the streets and by dint of the park. And wherever she went, she saw a boy and a girl in concert walking arm-in-arm, sitting on a park bench with their weapons system around each other, standing closely and in silence in a vestibule. Everyone in the world but Francie had a sweetheart or a friend she seemed to be the only lonely one in Brooklyn without a friend. Loneliness is one of the challenges we must all conquer as part of m aturing and it helps us learn to be independent and overcome hardship.   Family relationships argon a second problem faced by all in their coming of age. Francie loves her Johnny Nolan, her father, more than anything, she adores the course he talks and the way that he sings.