A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Final)

You're on the playground with the rest of your third grade class. You're playing with the rest of your friends when, suddenly, one kids runs up to you and says that he knows something you don't, you'll never guess what in a million years. You must guess a dozen different things before you finally give up and the kid says, with triumph in a mocking tone, that, for your information, THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUSE. The group of kids around you goes into a shocked silence, then, all at once, some of you're friends start crying, while others start shouting at the kid that there IS, in fact, a Santa Clause, and who did he think he was, saying something like that and ruining their Christmas. You just stand there and, suddenly, what the kid says makes sense; why you have to go to bed early, why your mom and dad stay up almost all night but never see Santa Clause, how the presents you ended up getting for Christmas had ended up in the closet that one year.Even worse, you realize that your parents had lied to you this entire time. In the years to come, you never will completely trust your parents because of this gain of experience in your innocence. Events that occur as a person goes from innocence to experience effect who they become in the future.

Innocence never lasts forever, for it must be replace by experience throughout a person's life. In A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, when Francie compared the baby to the old man, the baby symbolized her innocence and the old man, the coming experience. As she realized that the old man had once been a baby thus the baby would become an old man one day, she realized that she would one day be old, her innocence swapped for experience, like the old man, a thought that frightened her. Later, though, she lost some of her innocence to the doctor, who's scorn for the dirty child in front of him brings Francie experience, regardless of Francie's fear of losing her innocence. It doesn't matter if a person wants to or not, people lose innocence with the gain of experience every day, no matter what they do or where they are, as they grow and gain knowledge. Everything that happens brings experience, from spending time with friends, to being hungry, both of which are things that everyone has ,or will, have happen to them. In short, experience is unavoidable, as is the loss of innocence, to all.

The time when people go from innocence to experience is important for who they will become in the future. During her innocence, Francie was fascinated with the chalkboard erasers that a little girl would bring out everyday, but when the girl re payed Francie for admiring her by spitting in her face and calling Francie names when she didn't cry, Francie hated that girl, and because they reminded Francie of the girl, she hated chalkboard erasers from then on as well. It could have turned out differently; if the little girl had treat Francie with more kindness instead of spitting in her face, Francie and the girl could have been friends, Francie wouldn't have hated chalkboard erasers, and Francie might have ended up a teacher's pet, like she had originally planned. Francie might have gone from innocence to experience in a completely different way and could have ended up as a completely different kind of person. If a person likes something, snakes, for example, and nothing happens to make them think otherwise, they'd go from innocence to experience liking snakes, but if that person had something happen to them to turn them against snakes, something scary, hurtful, all around unpleasant, that person would, more likely than not, go from innocence to experience hating snakes. This is something that could completely change that person's life, from the friends they make to the job they take to where that person lives, which, in turn, would affect who they are in the future and so on. Going from innocence to experience affect a persons entire life, for better or for worse.

The gain of experience from innocence changes a person's perspective. It can happen slowly over time, or abruptly and all at once. The faster a person gains experience, the faster their perspective changes, and the better that person can see that the difference is like going from black and white to color. Francie Nolan found some things out over time; the fact that her mother doesn't know everything, how some people found the way her father came home drunk funny. These were no shock to her and she only saw these things over time, but other things she found out suddenly and they stuck with her the rest of her life. Joanna's baby being hit in the head with a rock helped her realize that there are things in the world that will try to hurt you and there are no exception for age or innocence. Receiving the flowers from her father shows that not even death can keep a father from loving his daughter. Once a person learns lessons such as these, they move further into experience, and can look back on their innocence and see the change of perspective they've acquired through experience in the form of decisions that didn't seem as foolish then, and beliefs that are now purely unbelievable. Since then, lessons have been learned, experience gained, the former way of seeing things forever modified. Francie always remembered her ordeal in the street and the roses from Johnny because what they meant to her was more than just memories, they were lessons that shouldn't be forgotten.

Everything must change with time, from the great Earth, to the people that inhabit it. People gain experience from the loss of innocence, though how experience is gained effects a person and stays with them for the rest of their lives. If a young tree is hit by lightning, the mark of past experience stays with it until the tree itself is no more. So to say, as a tree grows from a seed, so does experience grow from innocence, and so a child becomes an adult. This is how it is and this is how it always will be.