The Giving Tree

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Don't do it, Giving Tree!
"Once there was a tree... and she loved a little boy."

A selfless tree falls in love with a boy and sacrifices everything she has to make the boy happy.

One of Shel Silverstein's best known works from an anthology of stories from a book of the same name. It is widely believed to be a metaphor for human, and especially parent-child, relationships.

This story is absolutely made of Applicability and even young children at barely the required reading level can recognize this. In fact, if read without regards to the symbolism, the story is disturbingly laden with Fridge Logic and Fridge Horror. For this reason the examples are split into three sections.


Tropes used in The Giving Tree include:

If read as a metaphor

If read literally

Read either way this work is an example of: