I agree with you whole heartedly that the message is terrible. I wonder how much of it is a misunderstanding of S. S.’s mindset. I knew him first from his work with Playboy (the interviews and the articles only =:-0) and his lyrics for Doctor Hook. I think of him as a hippie version of Roald Dahl and I wonder how much irony is placed in the book. It might be a case of how we look at Charles Dickens with nostalgia while we ignore his description of the industrial revolution’s horror, or how Blake (who I love) ignores the background of Milton’s world to suggest that the devil is the hero of Paradise Lost.
Yes! Silverstein tends to be pretty dark, and I think Dahl is a good example. I believe he also said he didn’t have a particular message in mind for the book, that he was just writing about a relationship between two people, which would fit with what I know about him as an author. People can interpret it how they want, of course, but I think the “take the tree as a role model!”message is overlooking some unsavory aspects of the plot.
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I agree with you whole heartedly that the message is terrible. I wonder how much of it is a misunderstanding of S. S.’s mindset. I knew him first from his work with Playboy (the interviews and the articles only =:-0) and his lyrics for Doctor Hook. I think of him as a hippie version of Roald Dahl and I wonder how much irony is placed in the book. It might be a case of how we look at Charles Dickens with nostalgia while we ignore his description of the industrial revolution’s horror, or how Blake (who I love) ignores the background of Milton’s world to suggest that the devil is the hero of Paradise Lost.
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Yes! Silverstein tends to be pretty dark, and I think Dahl is a good example. I believe he also said he didn’t have a particular message in mind for the book, that he was just writing about a relationship between two people, which would fit with what I know about him as an author. People can interpret it how they want, of course, but I think the “take the tree as a role model!”message is overlooking some unsavory aspects of the plot.
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