Posted: June 16, 2022
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
At the core of this book is a lot of truths about life, written in straightforward yet skillful style. This book really has everything: joy, sadness, disappointment, wonder, just everything. Because it is about life and life is about everything. This book made me break out in laughter several times and it brought me near tears several times also.
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is an acknowledged modern classic. I've never read a classic book that wasn't written to a high standard, and the best classic books I've read are the best books I've ever read. Having just read "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" I can say that of this book also - this is one of the best books I've ever read.
The Rommely family immigrates from Austria to the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn New York. The Rommely family is composed of Thomas and Mary Rommely and their three daughters Sissy, Eliza, Evy, and Katie.
Thomas flees Europe to escape conscription. The family is poor and illiterate. The husband and wife are not aware that primary education is free in the United States so their eldest girl, Sissy, misses out on learning to read and write. The other girls become the first members of their family to learn their letters and graduate from grade school.
Working in a factory, Katie meets a debonair young man named Johnny Nolan. They hit if off and get married. Johnny, together with his brothers work as singing waiters. After his marriage ot Katie, the pair work as maintenance personnel for a school. Soon their eldest child Francie is born. Francie is the main character of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". She is born in the year 1900 and the book follows her story and that of her family until around 1917.
Although good-hearted and good-looking, Johnny Nolan has a terrible weakness for alcohol. It will slowly sabotage his life until his early death at age 34. Johnny is the best drunkard I've ever read. There no violent rages, no abuse of family. It's just the waste of money and staggering ineptitude of drunkeness. The reason Johnny drinks is he feels overwhelmed with his life.
Katie, on the other hand, is a fighter. She is the backbone of the family. Doing the work that needs to be done and making the decisions that has to be made.
One of my favorite characters in this book is the matriarch, Mary Rommely, and here are three conversations with her daughter Katie to justify why I like this character so much. The first is about the importance of education:
"Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, Mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?"
"The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every this must be until the child learns to read. The she must read every day, I know this is the secret."
"I will read," promised Katie."What is a good book?"
"There are two great books. Shakespeare is a great book. I have heard tell that all the wonder of life is in that book; all that man has learned of beauty, all that he may know of wisdom and living are on those pages. It is said that those stories are plays to be acted out on the stage. I have never spoken to anyone who has seen this great thing. But I heard the lord of our land back in Austria say that some of the pages sing themselves like songs."
"Is Shakespeare a book in the German?"
"It is of the English. I so heard our lord of the land tell his young son who was setting out for the great universiy of Heidelberg long ago."
"And what is the other great book?"
It is the Bible that the Protestant people read."
"We have out own Bible, the Catholic One."
"Mary looked around the room furtively."It is not fitting for a good Catholic to say so but I believe that the Protestant Bible contains more of the loveliness of the greatest story on this earth and beyond it. A much-loved Protestant friend once read some of her Bible to me and I found it as I have said."
"That is the book, then, and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page to your child - even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child wll grow up knowing what is great - knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world".
"The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare."
The next conversation is about the value of imagination:
And you must tell the child the legends I told you - as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of people - fairies, elves, dwarfs and such. You must tell of the great ghosts that haunted your father's people and of the evil eye which a hex put on your aunt. You must teach the child of the signs that come to the women of our family when there is trouble and death to be. And the child must believe in the Lord God and Jesus, His Only Son." She crossed herself.
"Oh and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six".
"Mother, I know there are no ghosts or fairies. I would be teaching the child foolish lies."
"Mary spoke sharply. "You do not know whether there are not ghosts on earth or angels in heaven."
"I know there is no Santa Claus."
"Yet you must teach the child these things are so."
"Why? When I, myself, do not believe?"
"Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that nevere were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Ony by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for."
"The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed."
"That is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character."
Then comes some advise on saving:
"Before you die, you must own a bit of land - maybe with a house on it that your child or your children may inherit."
"Katie laughed. "Me own land? A house? We're lucky if we can pay our rent."
"Even so." Mary spoke firmly. "Yet you must do that. For thousands of years, our people have been peasants working on the land of others. This was in the old country. Here we do better working with our hands in the factory. There is a part of each day that does not belong to the the master but which the worker owns himself. That is good. But to own a bit of land is better; a bit of land that we may hand down to our children...that will raise us up on the face of the earth."
"How can we ever get to own land? Johnny and I work and we earn so little. Sometimes after the rent is paid and the insurance there is hardly enough left for food. How could we save for land?"
"You must take an empty condensed milk can and wash it well."
"A can...?"
"Cut off the top neatly. Cut strips down into the can the length of your finger. Let each strip be so wide." She measured two inches with her fingers. "Bend the strips backward. the can will look like a clumsy star. Make a slit in the top. Then nail the can, a nail on each strip, in the darkest corner of your closet. Each day put five cents in it. In three years there will be a small fortune, fifty dollars. Take the money and buy a lot in the country. Get the papers that say it is yours. Thus you become a landowner. Once one has owned land, there is no going back to being a serf."
"Five cents a day. It seems a little. But where is it to come from? We haven't enough now and with another mouth to feed..."
"You must do it thus: You go to the green grocer's and ask how much are carrots the bunch. The man will say three cents. Then look about until you see another bunch, not so fresh, not so large. You will say: May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank. It is winter, say. You bought a bushel of coal for twenty-five cents. It is cold. You would start a fire in the stove. But wait! Wait one more hour. Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl around you. Say, I am cold because I am saving to buy land. That hour will save you three cents worth of coal. That is three cents for the bank. When you are alone at night, do not light the lamp. Sit in the darkness and dream a while. Reckon out how much oil you saved and put its value in pennies in the bank. The money will grow. Someday there will be fifty dollars and somewhere on this long island is a piece of land that you may buy for that money."
"Will it work, this saving?"
"I swear by the Holy Mother it will."
The year after Francie is born her brother Neeley arrives. These two will be a great comfort to each other as the years roll by - supporting each other as well as the family. Much later in the story Francie and Neeley will be the twin breadwinners who will bring in more money into the family than even Katie and Johnny.
Katie has two other sisters, Sissy and Evy, who figure largely in the story. The lives of both sisters ae also the subject of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". The third sister, Eliza, becomes an nun and changes her name to Sister Ursula. We see her only once in the story. Sissy is described depicted as promiscuous but the negative connotation of that is challenged by Smith, and rightly so. Indeed, a lot of the prudish mores of this time of history is shown to be the attitude of small-minded people. Sissy has a good heart and a clever mind that she uses for herself and her sisters. Evy seems to be the more traditional housewife type until her husband, a milkman, meets with an accident, and Evy shows her stuff by taking over the milk route for a time.
There is an incident in this story has been quite upsetting for me: A young Francie looks on in fascination at an older girl, a schoolgirl. The girl has been tasked to dust out a pair of erasers. She invites the fascinated Francie in closer to watch. When Francie comes in close the girl spits on her, taunting her, and waiting for her to cry. Francine retreats from the incident with waves of pure pain coursing through her. I would not be so affected by this incident if it didn't remind me of a terrible truth: That life can indeed be this unreasoning and cruel.
Much later in my readings I began to realize that "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" also gives me the balm for the traumatic incident above. It happens in an earlier part of the book, again with Mary Rommely. Mary Rommely, following the saving advice she gave to her daughter also starts her own star bank. She saves 50 dollars and buys a piece of land!. Later on she sees some people building on her land and she complains about it. It turns out the "deed" she was given was worthless and she has been swindled; it was easy to do it to her because she is illiterate. What does this good woman do? She starts saving yet again.
What happened to Mary was every bit as painful as what happned to Francie. But through Mary this book tells us how to behave in front of ruthless life. Get up, just get up and be tough enough to take the pounding. No drama, just get up.
Mary Rommely is my hero.
Johnny Nolan, is also a figure to be admired. He was a drunk and a bad provider but at least he was not abusive. And he was a loving husbank and a good father. In one incident in this book he really delivers - his initiative made it possible for Francie to go to a better school. Johnny will die young in the pages of this book, overwhelmed by a life that he did not have the innate capability to deal with but he did what he could. He did what he could. I don't think we can ask anything more from Johnny.
And so this book will roll on until the World War I years. All these character's stories will weave around each other and the reader will accompany them through all these interesting changes. It's a page turner and a great read. And it has a happy ending. If you've been on the fence about "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn", go for it, you won't regret reading this book.
I'm now trying to recall what my expectations were coming to this book. I expected it to be good but I did not expect this to be this good. There is no magic here, no murder, no supernatural elements. It just tells the story of a family living in Brooklyn. But it does so in a way that one interesting scene follows another. There are no boring moments. "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is a 500-page pageturner.
I can say that this book is about you, it is about me, it is about every human being. It is about our shared humanity and it has truth at its core. That's the key I suppose. This book is honest; well most of it is. There are some parts that stretches things a bit (like the Flittman parts - you'll know what these are when you read the book). The well-written truths in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is a pleasure to read.