A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Pgs 195-293)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Blogspot #3

            Around Thanksgiving time, Francie did a few things: she told a lie, was found out, and discovered that she had a talent for writing. Her teacher learned that Francie was lying for her own selfish sake and told her to write down her imagination to separate it from reality; Francie did and discovered that she wanted to be a writer when she grows up. On the night of Christmas Eve, the poor children in the neighborhood go to the Christmas tree shop and there, the store owner throws unwanted trees to kids, where they stand and catch it; if they succeeded, they keep it and if they don’t then they don’t. Francie and Neeley both tried to catch the grandest tree there, which they achieve and dragged it home. Everyone in the building was surprised and they joined in with Johnny’s choir. Katie, watching all of this happened, thought about the future and how she doesn’t want her children to turn out like them and that an education is the key to not becoming in the place they were now. Katie thought about Francie and how she’s growing up and distancing herself away from her mother, how she might find out Katie’s affection towards Neeley more, and how Francie doesn’t understand Katie. This entire thought process she thought of when her family was merrily dragging the Christmas tree up to their flat.

            Between Francie’s 11^th and 12^th birthdays, Francie noticed that she was growing up. She was looking past the little white lies her parents would tell to her and Neeley and her view was beginning to change. During the summer, Johnny had the notion that his children should love the sea and he took them and a neighbor’s child along to go fishing. The trip ended in disasters because the children became sick, the bought fish turned rotten and the neighbor didn’t understand Johnny’s idea and yelled at him. Ever since Francie found out she like writing, she kept a diary. She wrote about how she would never befriend a woman after she saw an incident with the neighborhood women. They were gossiping about a 17 year old single mother and how she shouldn’t stroll about with her child. Katie told Francie that she should be an example to her but Francie didn’t think like her mother and believed that women were devils. Francie wrote in her diary up to the fall and in the entries, she mentions her dad coming home quite a lot because he was sick. In her last entry she wrote a questioned asking if she was curious about sex, but then answered it with a yes. A sex crazed was going around with students in their school. They were curious about it and when Francie asked Katie about it, Katie told her; Francie was one of the lucky students that were told the truth, instead of having to go and test it out for herself.

            There was a rapist going around the neighborhood around this time and he killed a little girl down the streets. Parents protectively watched their children come home and the streets were quiet. When time went by without any trouble, the pervert struck again. He was about to attack Francie but Katie wounded him with a pistol. Francie wasn’t hurt but was given medicine to make her numb and she was told that it was all a dream, which she fell into believing. Sissy, Francie’s aunt, had wanted a baby terribly but her child was unable to survive for long so she came up with a plan. She heard about a family that was ashamed of their pregnant daughter; Sissy offered to take the baby after he/she has been born and she tricked her husband. Since there was no evidence that it wasn’t Sissy’s baby and since she stuck with it, everyone just believed her.

            Francie had a habit that she couldn’t go to sleep unless she was sure that her father, singing when he walks through the door, was safely home. When he did come home, he was singing the last verse of a song, in which he never sang before, which was about a death. Francie knew that her father wasn’t drunk but for some reason, she cried that night. When it was Christmas again, Katie was playing the piano and the children were eating their dinner; the atmosphere was tender but it changed when Johnny came home without singing. He started shouting how he hated how he hadn’t touch alcohol in a long time, and how he lost his job. Johnny died three days later. The first day he left, the second day he didn’t come home and everyone started looking for him. The third day, Katie was called to the hospital and saw that Johnny had contracted pneumonia. Katie used the money in the tin-can bank to buy a plot of land for the grave and on the death certificate, Katie told the doctor to write down pneumonia for the cause of death only, not including that alcohol was involved. After the funeral was done and the Nolans arrived back home, Katie started crying and Sissy tried to calm her down, saying that it wasn’t good for the unborn child, meaning that Katie is pregnant again.

“We’ll not have Johnny with us long” (Smith 208).

            I chose this quote because when I read it, I could interpret that Johnny was going to die soon. This also brought me back to a quote before, on page 123, “Francie didn’t notice that he said my last home instead of our last home” (Smith 123). When I also read this the first time, I didn’t fully understand what Johnny meant by this and ponder over this quote for a few minutes, but with no lead. As I read further into the novel, I began to think that something was going to happen to Johnny and it was confirmed by this quote. Even before in Francie’s diary, when she said Johnny kept being sick, my hypothesis grew stronger. Now I was sure Johnny was going to die and he did past away.