Examples Of Poverty In A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

Poverty in Francie’s Life
In her novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith shows that although poverty crushes dreams, it also builds determination to succeed.

While poverty makes some of Francies dreams harder to achieve, this struggle also makes her work harder to reach them. When there is not enough money for both children to go to school and Mama decides Neely should go this crushes Francis dream getting an education through college. “I want to go back to school more ‘n I’ll ever want anything in my life” (Smith, page 384) this quote shows how Francie wants to go back to school more than anything, including having money as she just got a raise in her current job, and that even though her dreams are momentarily crushed this is building her determination to go back next year. When Francie writes about her

She says “Drunkenness is neither truth nor beauty. It’s a vice. Drunkards belong in jail, not stories. And poverty. There is no excuse for that. There’s work enough for all who want it. People are poor because they’re too lazy to work. There’s nothing beautiful about laziness.” (Smith, page 322) This shows what Francies teacher thinks of poverty, that it isn’t real, that everyone who wants work can find it and make as much money as they need. However Francie disagrees with this. Her teacher tells her to burn the stories about poverty that she thinks of as ugly. However, because this has sparked her determination for truth she does not burn the stories her teacher thinks of as ugly. Instead she burns the stories she wrote about perfect lives that she now thinks of as ugly. This example also shows the one of the moments when Francie begins to doubt herself as a writer, which she thought of as one of her greatest strengths until now. As writing is one of her dreams her teacher has crushed it, which the opposite of what you would expect. However