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.
If read as a metaphor this work provides examples of
If read without metaphor this work provides examples of:
Read either way this work is an example of: