About That Tree
Three paragraphs into the story, a simile is engaged for the purpose of comparison to create a clear metaphorical image in the mind of the reader:
“The one tree in Francie ’s yard was neither a pine nor a hemlock. It had pointed leaves which grew along green switches which radiated from the bough and made a tree which looked like a lot of opened green umbrellas.”
A Troubled Marriage
The relationship between Francie’s grandmother and grandfather is not exactly one which presents an idealized portrait of marriage. In fact, it’s pretty bad. Actually, bad isn’t the right word to describe a rather shocking metaphorical expression like this one in which her grandmother, thinking of her husband:
“sighed and said to herself, `Yes, he is the devil.’”
Catching Christmas
Chapter 27 details a “cruel custom in the neighborhood. It was about the trees still unsold when midnight of Christmas Eve approached.” At midnight, the owner of Christmas tree lot allows kids to line up and try to catch the leftover trees that he flings toward them. The first tree he flings is always the largest and mainly to spit the local bully, he allows Francie and Neely to try to catch it even though he feels guilty because they are so small. As the tree is flung, the perspective shifts to Francie and metaphor displaces realistic description:
“There was a split bit of being when time and space had no meaning. The whole world stood still as something dark and monstrous came through the air. The tree came towards her blotting out all memory of her ever having lived. There was nothing—nothing but pungent darkness and something that grew and grew as it rushed at her.”
Joanna
Joanna is a pivotal character in terms of Francie’s growing up, if not in terms of how often she appears. She is an unmarried, single mom which is bad enough, but nothing compared to her real crime: lacking any shame about being an unmarried single mom. What happens to her is terrible, one of the book’s most shocking scenes. Leading to that scene is a description of Joanna courtesy of Johnny discloses not just what she looks like is a revelation of his character as well:
“`She has skin like a magnolia petal.’ (Johnny had never seen a magnolia.) `Her hair is as black as a raven’s wing.’ (He had never seen such a bird.) `And her eyes are deep and dark like forest pools.’”
“never trust any woman again”
The horrendous thing which happens to Joanna at the hands of seemingly benevolent neighborhood housewives and mothers leaves deep scars on Francie’s fragile young psyche. That night she writes in her diary a commitment to never have a woman as a friend and never to trust any but her mother and aunts. She has come to conclude, based on her first peek behind the curtain that:
“Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman.”
