A Tree Grows In Brooklyn Analysis

Register to read the introduction… The neighborhood gossips about Joanna – about her not being married and having a child. A group of women begin to taunt her, and throw stones. One hits the baby, and she starts bleeding. Francie, feeling compassion, gives up her only magazine and leaves it in the carriage as a present for Joanna. Joanna’s situation confuses Francie. Joanna always is kind to Francie, but Francie feels that she shouldn’t even return a smile to her. She learns the hidden double standards there is with the women, who themselves aren’t such a good mother as Joanna, who criticize and taunt her. She realizes that Joanna’s crime was not promiscuity, but failing to have someone force to marry them. Francie decides that women cannot be trusted and that she cannot have women friends. She feels sympathy for Joanna, and once again loses a bit of innocence in seeing the truth of cruel injustice.
Francie experiences her biggest fear when she opens the door at the bottom of the apartment building one day after school. She is attacked by a sexual predator that killed a seven-year-old not too long beforehand. Although he didn’t have a change to do anything than touch her leg because Katie …show more content…
In the last chapter, Francie takes a walk through the neighborhood with her little sister before she moves. There is a sense of pride within the last chapter; a feeling of finally breaking through barriers. “The Tree of Heaven” grows all throughout Brooklyn, and is constantly connected with Francie. Like Francie, the tree grows no matter in what conditions it’s put in. Francie, like the tree, survived and grew strong despite poverty, pain, and loss. Francie is finally more aware of the world, and her position in it. Francie closes this chapter in her life, and a future filled with promises lie