Realism and Sentimentality in Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
This paper examines Betty Smith's 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as a work caught between sentimentality and realism, arguing that these two narrative modes operate simultaneously throughout the text. Through close reading and secondary scholarship, the paper traces how the Tree of Heaven symbolizes both the perseverance of the Nolan family and the broader nostalgia of 1940s urban America. It explores how characters such as Francie, Johnny, Neeley, and Katie each embody the novel's central theme of doubleness — a tension between longing for the past and the necessity of pressing forward — and how Smith's lyrical prose style balances emotional appeal with unflinching depictions of poverty, alcoholism, and immigrant life.
- Introduction: A Sentimental War-Time Novel: Smith's novel as wartime nostalgia and sentimental ode
- The Double Nature of Characters and Narrative: Characters embody simultaneous sorrow and joy
- The Tree of Heaven as Central Symbol: Tree symbolizes Nolan perseverance and striving
- Realism and the Harsh Realities of Immigrant Life: Novel's frank realism depicts immigrant poverty honestly
- Francie as Reader, Dreamer, and Escape Artist: Francie's reading habit as symbolic escape
- Doubleness, Nostalgia, and the Meeting with Florrie: Francie's reunion with her past self through Florrie
- Conclusion: The Union of Sentimental and Real: Doubleness unifies characters, symbol, and novel's resolution
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What makes this paper effective
- The central argument — that Smith's novel operates through a deliberate double nature of realism and sentimentality — is clearly stated in the introduction and consistently supported through textual evidence and secondary scholarship.
- The paper integrates direct quotations from the novel fluently, using them to illustrate both close reading and broader thematic claims rather than merely summarizing plot.
- Secondary sources (Therrien, Bryant, Gelfant, Wohlwill) are deployed purposefully, each lending a distinct critical angle that enriches rather than replaces the paper's own analysis.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective symbol analysis: it tracks a single image — the Tree of Heaven — across the full arc of the novel, showing how its meaning accumulates and shifts in relation to character development, thematic concerns, and historical context. This technique, sometimes called sustained close reading, allows the writer to ground large interpretive claims in specific textual moments.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a thesis-driven introduction establishing the novel's dual nature, then moves through a series of character-focused paragraphs (Johnny, Neeley, Francie, Katie) that each illustrate the doubleness theme. The analysis returns repeatedly to the Tree of Heaven symbol before pivoting to the novel's conclusion — Francie's encounter with Florrie — as the culminating demonstration of the paper's argument. A brief conclusion synthesizes the character readings and the symbolic through-line.
Introduction: A Sentimental War-Time Novel
Betty Smith's 1943 novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn can be read as a war-time novel situated in a landscape of nostalgia and longing. In this sense, it is often viewed as a sentimental work that appeals more strongly to the emotions and the heart than it does to the head or to the intellect — in a way that a more grotesque work, such as something by Flannery O'Connor of the same era, might do. Smith's novel, though realistic in many ways, is not a novel of realism or a novel of the bildungsroman genre. It is, rather, a sentimental ode to a way of life and the tenacious ways by which those who persevere can claim some sort of satisfaction at the end of a life well-traveled. The book contains moments of humor, sadness, melancholy, and heartache — but overall it sounds its theme in the Tree of Heaven that Francie Nolan uses to symbolize the Nolan spirit, and how the family as a whole keeps coming back to life in spite of all adversities, even after being seemingly knocked down and left for ruin.
This paper will show how the Tree of Heaven symbolizes not only the perseverance of the individual Nolans but also the sentimentality of 1940s urban America — a time and place caught up in the romanticism of the Good War, yet at the same time feeling the sting of deprivation, and looking toward the hope of reward in success, love, education, and all-around fulfillment — such as only Heaven could afford.
Works Cited
Bryant, Jennings. "Foreword." Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing. NY: Routledge, 2006.
Gelfant, Blanche. "Sister to Faust: The City's 'Hungry Woman' as Heroine." NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 15, no. 1 (Autumn 1981): 23–38.
Smith, Betty. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. NY: Harper and Brothers, 1943.
Therrien, Kathleen. "'Why do They Have To … To … Say Things …': Poverty, Class and Gender in Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn." Discourses of Women and Class, vol. 16, no. 1 (1999): 93–105.
Wohlwill, Joachim. "The Emerging Discipline of Environmental Psychology." American Psychologist, vol. 25, no. 4 (Apr. 1970): 303–312.
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