A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Summary

Temi Aminu December 19, 2016

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Big Idea:

The big idea is the challenges of growing up in a poor, lower class neighborhood.

Essential Questions:

What was the hardest part of growing up?

Why was reading and writing important to Francie?

Summary:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn took place during the summer in 1912 at Williamsburg, Brooklyn where a tree called the Tree of Heaven grew among the tenement houses. Francie Nolan was eleven years old and was Katie and Johnny Nolan first child. The Nolans lived in the run down sections of town. Francie would do many errands for her mother and she visits the library daily. Katie Nolan was the breadwinner in the family she was a janitor in the building in exchange for rent and Johnny was a Irish man who sings and waits table for extra money. At a young age Francie spent years struggling with poverty and her father 's alcohol abuse. Her mother always stress the fact that education is the only way to beat poverty so she would make Francie and her brother Neeley read a page from Shakespeare and from the Bible every night. Francie began school and she dislikes the way that she was treated because she was poor. A few months later before Neeley and Francie graduation, Johnny dies from his alcohol abuse so Francie writing reflected the depression she felt from her

Smith did not finish high school, but the university allowed her to enrolled in classes. On January 17, 1972 Smith died from pneumonia in Shelton, Connecticut at the age of 75."

Narrator:

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn does not have a narrator. The point of view of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is told in third person omniscient because we can hear what is going on inside the characters ' minds.