Remember Me

Response to A Tree Grows In Brooklyn

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life it’s in him to live. Sissy said that to Katie about Johnny’s drinking. You can’t change someone completely, there will always be a little of their old self in them, but you can try, to help. Nothing that ever happened will completely go away. Even when you erase a line on a paper you can still see it, but you can right over it with pen and make it true.

Johnny died and Laurie replaced him. There was a death and then a birth so it replaces and all of the spots are filled. Katie, Neeley and Francie lost their father/husband but they received Laurie just after he left. She didn’t replace him but she minimized some of their pain and brought a new pleasure to bring it back to their normal happiness level.

Francie had to accept where you she was then to be able to grow in the future. If I am a seed I have to think of myself as a seed. If I am a full grown poplar tree I have to see from the top of my branches not still at my roots, where I was as a seed. If I look from my roots I will still see myself the same as before, when I was a seed. Francie had to grow and improve, otherwise her mother’s effort and her effort and everything would all be for nothing. Francie could not accept that others did not like her writing so she quit, she burned it. She did not improve or grow, she shrunk. Her teacher did not like her, at the beginning because she was not rich and she didn’t even get a chance to prove herself otherwise.

My definition of free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. (Adlai Stevenson) In her time as well as ours this is definitely not true. It is not “safe” to be lower classified. Francie only ruined her papers but it could be a lot worse for others. There is a part that is alike in everyone so they shouldn’t really make judgments like that. It took Johnny to die, for others to realize just how good he was. It shouldn’t be that they have to leave completely for a point to get across.