log4: pigcatapult: cheshirelibrary: Sometimes classics can be improved upon. The Tree Who Set Health
log4: pigcatapult: cheshirelibrary: Sometimes classics can be improved upon. The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries : an alternate ending for Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree by Topher Payne ❤️ https://www.topherpayne.com/giving-tree? I’d always hated The Giving Tree as a kid, but I never realized how much I needed this alternate ending until just now. I’m sorry this version is bad and you’re all being very childish about analysing it. Shel Silverstein’s children stories are not happy. They aren’t meant to be happy. Not only does this version completely butcher the tone, it erases what makes Silverstein’s stories stand out to children. At the end of The Giving Tree there is no happy ending. There’s no legacy. There’s no happily ever after. There is a sad, tired old man sitting on a tree stump. The story flatly interjects “And the tree was happy.” at every juncture. The point of The Giving Tree is that at the end none of it mattered. The boy denied the tree asking him to do the thing that made him happy as a child. He does this a few times, in favor of money, and a family. The tree gives him a means to these things, but they ultimately don’t make him happy. The boy returns sad the third time. He wishes to escape. He takes the part of the trunk with the heart he carved for him and his lover but leaves the heart he carved of him and the tree. The final time he is only tired. He’s not happy. He can’t even do the things that did make him happy. There’s just an old, tired man, and a tree stump. It’s sad. It hurts a bit, for a lot of reasons. Shel Silverstein’s books have been banned on libraries for “promoting” the disrespect of authority, suicide, disobeying parents, death, violence, etc. And yet children love to read these stories. Because they fascinate kids. Just because a story did not make you feel good does not mean it needs to be rewritten. Just because the impact it had wasn’t a pleasant experience doesn’t lessen the significance of the story. This rewritten version completely undoes what makes Silverstein’s stories special and fascinating to children. It turns them into an average, almost fairy tale like story of a life, money, a family, descendants. It turns a melancholy finality into an overdone happily ever after. This rewritten version is indistinguishable from hundreds of other children’s stories. Silverstein himself commented that children are told stories about happiness that make them question where this “happiness” is and why they don’t have it. I would urge any adult to evaluate why this story makes you so much more uncomfortable now. Why does it hurt more? Why does it make you want to rewrite it? Erase it? Please confront the way the original story makes you feel rather than take refuge in a frankly poor rewrite. Stories exist to make you feel something. Don’t ignore that. The original ending of The Giving Tree might have been rather bittersweet, but by changing the ending, you ultimately change the book’s original message. -- source link
#literature#live advice