A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Essay

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn focuses on a poor American family in the early 1900s. They faced many hardships including those related to obstetrics. Medical care was not reliable during this time period and caused a variety of problems. The poor had the worst birthing conditions and were at a high risk for complications concerning themselves and the child. Betty Smith provides an accurate representation of medical care relating to delivery, infant mortality, and pregnancy at the turn of the twentieth

them as ‘catty’. This scenario, can also be used as a parallel, that depicts what society does to women. Society sets women in opposition to each other, by elevating a male’s status, and forcing women to seek approval from men. In the book, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the main character Francie observes, a situation where, a woman is verbally and eventually physically assaulted, by other women, because she is not married (or really, she doesn’t care nor needs the

Back then, there were many things that were completely different from how they are in today’s life. The book, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, reflects on the time period of the early 1900's, as a girl named Francie grows up with the struggles of living in a poor family during this time period. A few of the many things she faced includes racism, sexism, defective education systems, as well as child labor and an almost moneyless childhood. In today’s culture, many of the things faced back then are quite

I. Intro paragraph a. Hook: In the Irish American community of Brooklyn in the 1900’s, immigrants faced discrimination and crushing poverty b. In the world that Betty Smith describes in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” however, this poverty is depicted as a kind of virtue, a force that causes individuals to grow, and families to bond c. Yet, while female characters like Katie and Francie grow from overcoming the hardships brought on by poverty, Francie’s father Johnny Nolan is defeated

In my personal library, I’d include The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, Divergent, by Veronica Roth, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith. The protagonists in these books deliver a message of hope about the power of the individual, each in a different way. In The Alchemist, Santiago sets off to find treasure, but along his difficult journey acquires wisdom instead and develops a moral code: don’t let greed blur your vision, value the journey as well as the goal, and the treasure you seek is

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Response Essay “She would suffer all the rest of her life every time that she remembered that she had not smiled back,” (234). This sentence, written by Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, is in reference to when protagonist, Francie Nolan, had not allowed herself to smile back at a seemingly bad girl named Joanna because she thought she was not meant to be friendly with people like her. What struck me the most about the instance Francie says she will suffer

Residency in Brooklyn Then: In Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn the main character Francie lives in a poor area of Brooklyn called Williamsburg. In the 1910’s Brooklyn was mostly a poverished city and consisted of mostly white European immigrants. Like Francie, many of those immigrants lived in poorly built apartments known as tenements. The tenements that had once been single-family homes were divided into multiple living spaces to accommodate the growing number of immigrants. Politics

The novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is written with warm and honest style, but with a sobering and dismal story about tenement life and growing up with nothing. In the beginning stages of the novel the world is beautiful and simple for children like Francie and Neely. A world where many of the poor children who live in the Brooklyn slums aren’t aware of their dismal predicaments and scrape by with blissful ignorance. What has impressed me the most is how warm and fleshed out the narrative

their family. Women also have it harder as they faced gender inequality throughout their lives. On average, mothers spend more than twice the amount of hours taking care of their children than the father. In the realistic fiction novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, education and gender inequality were obstacles that hinder the Nolan family from achieving the American Dream. The story is about the teenage protagonist, Francie Nolan whose journey started as her family strived for the American

to the kitchen and the washrooms to slave over the male figurehead. Betty Smith used A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to beat down the sexual stereotypes of the time. The male leads in the novel were portrayed upon as weak and ignorant. Francie, Katie, and Sissy were all forceful characters that steered the direction of the book. Throughout our reading of Books One, Two and Three of the novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the author, Betty Smith, is admired for her portrayal of strong female characters, who