THE WRITTEN WORD

June 10, 2009 - 12:50pm — Christopher L You should never stop loving someone or something if you don’t receive anything in return. The book "The Giving Tree” written by Shel Silverstein can be likened to many different relationships. It might be a children’s book, but I think people can learn a lot about real situations in our lives. I’m going to write about three examples. This book has two main characters that were best friends and loved each other very much. This happened when the character was only a little boy. Soon he grew older and as he grew older  he didn’t love the tree anymore. He liked the tree for what she was giving him. He kept on asking for things without saying please or thank you. This relates to my sentence because if the tree stopped giving the boy gifts he might have stopped coming and he might not like the tree anymore. The story also relates to a parent and her child. It relates to the story because a parent would try to give anything her child wants. It also relates to my sentence because if the parent says no, that child has a fit. I remember I asked my mom to buy me a new game, but she said no. Then I got upset and didn’t think about the reason she said that, but now I know. Finally, we have humans and the environment. Like the tree, the environment gives us to survive, but we take so much that we don’t need all of the things we have. We’re just being selfish. When we do this we don’t know how the environment feels about taking away animals’ homes, cutting down trees, and killing living creatures. This is related to my sentence because if a farmer has a tree and it is supposed to produce apples, but it doesn’t, he cuts it down and plants a new one. We should take care of our environment, and not destroy trees. I think people can learn a lot from this book. It takes a lot of thinking to interpret what Shel Silverstein wants to tell us. I also think that he is trying to tell us that if we take but don’t give back or be thankful for what we have, there will be a lot of negative effects in the future from us. This is why the book “The Giving Tree” is a powerful book. In this way we can destroy the environment for our descendants.