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1-Page Summary of The Giving Tree

Overall Summary

The Giving Tree is a famous children’s book written by Shel Silverstein. The story is quite bare of text, and as with many children’s books, the illustrations are essential to the progression of the story. Besides being one of Silverstein’s most popular stories, The Giving Tree was also controversial for its portrayal of female exploitation and anthropocentric views on nature.

The book “The Giving Tree” is about a tree and a little boy. The two characters are unnamed, but the story takes place in an unspecified location. These details may seem unimportant because we’re so familiar with the book, but they’re important to note: there’s no unnecessary information that distracts us from focusing on those two characters and their relationship.

A tree is happy when a boy plays in its branches and rests under it. The boy stops coming to see the tree as he grows older, but one day the boy returns after a long absence. The tree asks him to play like before, but the boy says that he’s too big for that now and wants money instead. He tells her that if she gives him apples from her orchard, he’ll sell them in town and make lots of money so he can have fun (the story does not say what kind of fun). The tree agrees to this arrangement because she believes she will be happier with more money than without it.

The boy comes back after a long time and the tree is happy but sad to see him. The boy says he’s busy and can’t play with the tree anymore because he wants a wife and child. He asks for a house from the tree, who sadly tells him she doesn’t have one to give. However, if he gathers her branches into his arms, then they’ll be like building blocks that will help him build his own home.

A boy leaves a tree and comes back after many years. When he returns, the tree is happy to see him. The boy says that he wants to build a boat so that he can leave the island. The tree tells him that she has no boat but offers her trunk for his use instead. After the boy leaves again, this time more permanently, the tree feels somewhat sad because she was “happy…but not really.”

The boy visits the tree one last time. After an unspecified amount of time, he arrives and tells her that she has nothing left to give him: no more apples, branches or trunk (he’s too old for those things). She is now only a stump with no purpose. He sits on it anyway just to rest. The tree is happy about this because she was able to help him out in his time of need.

The ambiguity in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree is what makes it so moving and infuriating. It requires the reader to actively participate in the meaning-making process, which can be difficult because of its minimalism. This story has been historically used as a blank canvas onto which readers can project their anxieties about relationships. However, I think that this ambiguity is what Silverstein wants to emphasize: he may want us to worry about close relationships generally rather than any particular relationship dynamic.