A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Betty Smith

4 ideas

1. Grandmother's three-part formula for escaping poverty

   When Francie is born, her illiterate immigrant grandmother Mary Rommely gives her daughter Katie a plan for lifting a child out of poverty: read one page of Shakespeare and one page of the Bible aloud every day, save pennies in a tin-can bank nailed inside the closet, and use the savings to buy land. The mechanism is that literacy, disciplined saving and property ownership compound across one generation, so a parent who cannot escape herself can still build the ladder her child climbs.

2. The Tree of Heaven in tenement yards

   The ailanthus, called the Tree of Heaven, is described as growing in the tenement districts, pushing up through cement, boarded-up lots and rubbish heaps with little water, soil or care. It stands for persistence under deprivation, mirroring the tenement child who keeps growing in hard surroundings.

3. Francie lies her way into a better school

   Francie is miserable at her crowded, brutal neighborhood school, and her alcoholic father Johnny walks with her until they find a better school in a nicer district. They pick a house near it and use its address as hers, so she can transfer. She attends a school with kind teachers and children from better-off families, which shows that a small rule-breaking act by a failing parent can open access to institutions that poverty would otherwise gatekeep.

4. Deliberate waste as dignity for the poor

   Katie lets Francie take a cup of coffee at every meal, even though Francie often just holds it for warmth and then pours it down the sink, which angers relatives who call it waste. Katie's reasoning is that poor people rarely get to waste anything, so being able to throw something away gives a child a felt sense of having more than enough. On this view, a small controlled extravagance protects self-respect better than strict thrift does.

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