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From an “conversation” with Shel Silverstein:
Happy endings, magic solutions in children’s books, he says; “create an alienation” in the child who reads them. “The child asks why don’t I have this happiness thing you’re telling me about, and comes to think when his joy stops that he has failed, that it won’t come back.” By the same token, creating mythic heroes “20 feet tall” places an impossible burden on the child, who feels he can never live up to the image.
From an article on the moral perspective of the Giving Tree.
If you ask parents to think of a children’s book about generosity, “The Giving Tree” is usually the first — and often the only — one they can name. But here’s the thing: It’s not really about generosity. It’s a book about self-sacrifice — and those are two very different things.
To some readers, the tree’s act of sacrifice seems noble, like the unconditional love a parent gives to a child. But if you assume the story is about generosity, it’s easy to learn the wrong lessons: that it’s O.K. for a child to take selfishly, and that adults should give until it hurts — and keep giving until they literally have nothing left to offer. That’s a recipe for trouble.
but the last column is a parenting column. That’s part of the shame of children’s books–so many of them are so rigorously analyzed by child psychologists, that sometimes I feel that I’m not reading literary criticism, but instead an article on propaganda.
So the alternate ending disrespects authorial intent, and misses the ethical lessons that the original provides–or can be read to provide.
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Fixed that for ya.
Brilliant metaphor; way to decimate disingenuous arguments based on some people’s nostalgic feelings.
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