Talk:The Giving Tree
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Made some changes.
[edit]Note: This is my first ever edit to Wikipedia
Brennan Manning
[edit](NOTE: I've never contributed to Wikipedia before, so if I make a mistake here, please forgive me.)
I enjoy listening to messages by a speaker named Brennan Manning. (You can find his website with a simple Google search. He also has some lectures on iTunes U and in some Podcasts.) In many of them he quotes "The Giving Tree" in its entirety. In one that I listened to on cassette many years ago (so I don't have a reference for), he said that when he was a younger man one of his best friends was Saul (or Shel) Silverstein. During one conversation, Brennan asked Saul how he, as a Jew, understood Jesus. Brennan said that Saul told him he would work on it. He came back to Brennan with the text of "The Giving Tree."
I was surprised that this connection isn't made anywhere on the Wiki page for the book. I decided to post it here to see if it helps at all.
67.134.102.142 (talk) 18:02, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
- Shel Silverstein's first name was Sheldon, not Saul. Maybe this "Saul Silverstein" was a different person? --Metropolitan90 (talk) 17:07, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
Interpretation
[edit]The link to the "Symposium" is great. Yet "Ben Jackson" of Stanford is not Ben Jackson. He is Timothy P. Jackson and now teaches at Emory. Just type "Ben Jackson Giving Tree" into a search engine and see how many times this mistake has been replicated.
Author's photo controversy section
[edit]Under criticism of The Giving Tree, there is a section that talks about how the photo of the author on the back cover was frightening to some people. I honestly don't think this is relevant to this page. Is The Giving Tree the only book that has this photo on the back? If it's not the only one, then I think this page isn't the best place for discussion about a photograph that has nothing to do with the story. Maybe a better place to put it would be on Shel Silverstein's main Wikipedia page? A. E. Katz (talk) 00:14, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
Lessons section
[edit]It needs a section of 'Lessons' in this wikipage. Dwh2007 (talk) 14:44, 11 June 2025 (UTC)
As metaphor for stages of life?
[edit]Has no one written about the story as a metaphor for the stages of life? The tree provides sustenance when that's all the boy needs. Then the abundance of fruits when the boy grows into the broader needs of adulthood. Then lumber from the tree, and labor from the boy to provide a home to raise the next generation of life. Then a final gift of a resting place when both are exhausted. Both are happy because those are their purposes. 97.177.226.236 (talk) 11:16, 11 August 2025 (UTC)