“Children’s books provide chilling evidence of mind-control through dismembering myth. Fairy tales are particularly gruesome examples. An apparently genteel contemporary type of disguised mind-dismembering myth for children is exemplified in The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. It is the story of a tree – consistently referred to by the pronoun she – who gives absolutely everything she has to a boy. This begins innocently enough, with her shade, leaves, and fruit. But, the boy grows up and cuts off her branches and then her trunk. Finally, in his old age, he uses her stump as a seat. As a result of all this nonreciprocated giving, the tree is “happy”. The jacket blurb of this book, published in 1964 but still a big seller, describes it as “a tender story … a moving parable for readers of all ages”. The story, in fact, is one of female rape and dismemberment. It draws upon sources in the Background of female identity, taking the Tree of Life – who is the Goddess – and making her a willing participant in her own mutilation, which makes her “happy”. Her degradation is total, for the “Giving Tree” wallows in self-destruction. Here is a model of masochism for female readers of all ages, and of sadism for boys of all ages. This chilling children’s tale is an extension of christian myth. It is a superrefined, invasive, and deceptive offspring of self-satisfied secularists secure in their superiority to christian crudity. The saccharine sweet story of a little boy who “loves” a tree – a young Apollo who crowns himself with her leaves – has “healthier” appeal than overt S and M biblical tales of a dead godman crowned with thorns. Thus the postchristian (that is prechristian) parable has deceptive acceptability, extending its tentacles into unaware minds, guiding them to a more primal Fatherland, inhabited by paradigms of patriarchal matricide. It thus brings its parental purchasers and readers into unwitting compliance with primary programming for gynocide.”

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

Art by Dee Mulrooney