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Loss of Innocence in Francie Nolan Essay

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In Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Francie Nolan and her family struggle with many economical and emotional hardships in Brooklyn in the early 1900's. Her mother, Katie, and her father, Johnny, marry and have children at an extremely young age, causing their family's fate to be doomed right from the start. Francie, the older of the two children, has her mother's hard-work ethic, and her father's sentimentality and imagination. Through Francie's fear, humiliation, compassion, sorrow, pride, and disillusionment throughout the novel, she becomes the strong, intelligent woman she is. Francie is a sum of her family's suffering and experiences. With every incident, she loses some of her innocence. Francie, being a year older than her …show more content…

After this incident, however, she realizes how cruel prejudice can be, and that it can come from anyone and everyone. Once again, she feels humiliated. When it is finally time for Francie to go to school, she gets so thrilled and immediately starts making high expectations for her first year. She anticipates to learn to read and write on the first day, receive her own school supplies, and to become the teacher’s pet. She becomes disillusioned when she enters school, though. It obviously takes weeks to learn to read and write. She only gets one pencil that she must return at the end of the day, and has to share desks with the other lower-class children. She also realizes that only certain people attain the rank of teacher’s pet – the rich schoolgirls. Francie is disappointed upon coming to school, and continues her understanding of prejudice. During Christmastime, the family trades simple gifts to one another. Francie attends a Christmas event for the underprivileged children, where all the kids are too proud to accept any of the offers. When a small child wants to give away one of her dolls to whoever is named “Mary,” no one stirs. Francie, not wanting to let the gift to go to waste, lies about her name to bring the doll home. Although all of the other children keep their pride, she loses it, and feel embarrassed. On Francie’s way back home from buying a school magazine, she sees a young woman, Joanna, walking

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