A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

When Francie is born in Chapter 9, Mary Rommely tells her daughter Katie that it is important that she read to her children every night. Mary sees education as one way to escape poverty. Katie is told to read a page from the Bible and a page from any of Shakespeare's plays, and when the children learn how to read, they should read a page from each of the two books each night. This bedtime reading is the start of the children's education. The piano lessons in Chapter 17 are Katie's effort to expose the children to music and enhance their educations. In Chapter 19, when Francie starts school, it is an eagerly anticipated event. Although Francie is thrilled to finally learn how to read, her first school is a terrible place, where the children are beaten and mistreated. The school is overcrowded, and the teachers have no interest in teaching the poorer children. It does not take Francie long to find a school where she thinks she can get a better education. In Chapter 23, Francie learns that getting an education can be a wonderful experience. In Chapter 27, as she watches her children struggle to drag a large Christmas tree up the steps to their apartment, Katie suddenly realizes that education will be the only way for her children to have a better life. Johnny's death in Chapter 36 makes it more difficult for Francie and Neeley to continue in school, since the family is desperate for money; however, Katie is adamant that the children must stay in school long enough to graduate from eighth grade. The family can survive until the children receive their diplomas; then the children can work. Because they need the money from Francie's job, only Neeley is sent to high school. Francie, though, finds education in her job at the Model Press Clipping Bureau, where, in Chapter 44, the narrator describes how Francie reads 200 newspapers a day at work. She is able to enroll in college summer school in Chapter 48 because of her determination to get an education. Because she does not have a high school diploma, Francie must take the college entrance exam, which she passes. In Chapter 55, the narrator writes that Francie has been accepted by the University of Michigan. Through the determination of her grandmother Mary and her mother, Katie, as well as Francie's own tenacity and hard work, education becomes the means by which Francie is finally able to escape the poverty of her parents' lives.