Shel.

Author, Poet, Artist Shel Silverstein played a significant role in the formative literary lives of myself and many people my age. 

Who didn’t have a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends or A Light in the Attic, with his line drawings of a man who forgot his pants, or three children flying in a shoe? Who doesn’t remember a few lines here and there of that one about being sick but then, “What’s that you say, You say today is Saturday, Alright I’m going out to play” or “Pamela Purse Yelled Ladies First” and then ends up in a cannibal’s stew?

Shel’s poems are inventive, clever, imagination firing. And yet. It’s his two “full-length” books that I’m considering today. Books whose premise I simply don’t agree with, despite having heard others’ interpretations and admiration: The Missing Piece and The Giving Tree.

In The Missing Piece, we follow a Pac-Man-looking pie as he looks to find his own missing piece, the piece to complete him. Like Goldilocks, some are too big, some are too small, but in the end, he finds the one that’s just right.

In The Giving Tree, we watch as a small boy enjoys the bounty of an apple tree, the tree offering him fruit, a branch to swing from, its trunk, and then finally, simply a stump on which to sit.

Both of these books, to me, reek of codependence. ! And, yes, you might roll your eyes at me, analyzing a simple children’s book or reading too much into a story. Many people have told me how lovely and generous it is that the tree continues to give and give of itself until there’s barely anything of itself left, and then finally the boy, now an old man, comes to appreciate it.

Isn’t it a beautiful story of self-sacrifice and loyalty and steadfastness?

Erm…

How about the Missing Piece? All Shel’s trying to say is that we all walk around the world feeling slightly unwhole, slightly missing. We are all trying to fill in a place within us that feels empty. Sometimes we use things that we think will fit that place – sometimes we use people who we think will fit that place. But we continue to go through our lives looking for our missing piece, and when we find it, we are complete and we are happy.

Isn’t it a lovely metaphor for life, for our human striving for fulfillment and satisfaction?

Well…

As I said, I have a hard time appreciating these messages as they’re written, if they’re written with those intentions at all. I have a hard time integrating the message that we ought to divest ourselves of our needs in order to satisfy others, as the tree did. Or the message that we none of us are whole, and need someone to fulfill us, as the piece sought.

I recognize I may be being a little heavy-handed with my interpretation of these stories, but as someone who’s loved so much of Shel’s work, I bristle at the messages I glean from them.

In fantasy land, yes, it would be nice to have someone around who would give me everything I needed without asking anything in return except my eventual appreciation. Yes, it would be lovely to find a human who would complete me. But that’s not the way it works in reality land. And that’s not the way I think it should work.

I think it’s a strange message to pass along to kids, and an unrealistic vision of relationships that’s being set before us.

I was trying to explain “interdependence” to a friend of mine recently, and I sort of failed. But in the world of these stories, I guess the best I could say is if I am a piece rolling about the world, whether I feel whole or not, what I’d really want is another piece rolling alongside me, looking to make themselves whole, just as I am. And, in the end, mostly it’s about seeing that we already are, and discarding the skewed and broken glasses we use to view the world and ourselves.

If I were the tree, I’d hope to get to say the to boy, you know, I love you and all, but I could use some mutuality in this relationship, if that’s something you’re available for. And if the boy really needs to row a boat made out of my trunk, I’d hope for the strength to tell him … he’s barking up the wrong tree.

That all said, I will continue to pull out my copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends and read a random poem. I will hope to read it to a new generation of readers, and I will hope to be an iota as creative and ingenious as he has been. But, I also hope to learn the lessons I would have liked these books teach.