Tear Jerker / A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

As a Coming of Age Story, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is very gritty and depressing at times

• Johnny's death and what led up to it. He finds out his wife is pregnant with their third child, and they can barely survive with two, he gets fired from his job because his alcoholism is taking a toll, he goes out and freezes to death, all the while trying to get sober after going cold turkey, so that his youngest child at least, will have a better life.
  • Katie breaking down after the funeral.
  • During the ride to the funeral Katie and the kids are in the same carriage as Johnny's mother. She doesn't say anything to Katie or her grandchildren, and she apparently still hates them for taking her son, even though she could have visited at any time.
  • Katie, who is not demonstrative, hugs and kisses Neeley and Francie and says that she is now their mother and father. But goes right back to being undemonstrative and favoring Neeley.
• Katie and Francie's entire relationship. As soon as Neeley is born, when Francie is a year old, Katie decides that he will be her favorite and basically ignores Francie for the rest of her life.
• The scene where Joanna is stoned by the jealous women and her baby winds up being hurt by it.
• The scene where the children win a Christmas tree, and Johnny helps them bring it up the stairs and leads the entire building in a round of "O Holy Night".
• A bit earlier in the book, but when Sissy's first child is born, she's completely devastated to learn that said child was stillborn. On her fifteenth birthday no less.
  • She goes on to have nine more children who are all born dead, then finally gives birth to a live baby because she decides to deliver this one in a hospital.
• After Johnny's death, Francie starts writing more gritty and realistic stories (mostly about Johnny). Miss Gardner, her English teacher, tells her that her newer compositions are sordid, which Francie has to look up in the dictionary, and is horrified, angered and saddened that Miss Gardner would talk about him that way. To add salt in the wound, she tells Francie that her graduation play was rejected in favor of another student's play because it was more "appropriate." Ouch...
  • Upon graduation, Miss Gardener gives Francie a "C" for her final English grade, telling her it was generous of her to allow her to pass at all because Francie didn't turn in any work after the conversation with Miss Gardener.
  • This comes after Francie has lost the parent who cares more about her and whom she cares more for. Her stories about Johnny are ridiculed, Katie doesn't care about her enough to read any of her compositions before she burns them, and she does everything she can for Neeley while ignoring Francie.
• The scene (in the movie) where Francie and her mother reconcile as her mother is giving birth, especially when Francie reads her mother an essay she wrote about Johnny after he died.
  • The corresponding scene in the book is more straight tear-jerker than heartwarming moment; after ignoring Francie's writing for years, Katie finally asks to see some of it, only to find that she's recently burned it all. Katie is tormented by the understanding of how much of Francie's life she's missed out on by focusing on Neeley— which still doesn't stop her from going back to her usual ways after the baby is born.
• Francie's graduation, when she discovers a bouquet of flowers and a note from Johnny on her desk in the classroom. Before he died, Johnny had written the note and given Sissy the money to buy the flowers. Especially sad that Johnny did this knowing he might not be there for this special day.

• That poor young wife of that brutish dockworker was crying as she undressed for her husband. He doesn't care.
• The Nolan boys' deaths: Andy dies of tuberculosis, Frankie sustains a fatal puncture wound to his stomach after falling on a fence while drunk, and Johnny contracts pneumonia. No details are given for the fourth brother, Georgie, except that he dies at the age of 28. Johnny is the only one to live past 30 and have any children, and even he doesn't make it to 35.
• Ruthie Nolan's life. Her husband and four sons die young, leaving her a childless widow by about fifty. While Johnny is the only one who has children, she hates them (because she blames Katie for taking him away), and will spend the rest of her life alone.
• Laurie, having no memory of Johnny, calling McShane "Papa", and the older children, who decide to call McShane "Dad" because Johnny will always be "Papa" to them.
• At Johnny's funeral, Katie quietly pulls the children aside to let them know that people are gossiping that they don't want to look at him because he was a bad father. Although she clearly wants them to in order to dispel the rumors, she makes it abundantly clear that she won't force them if they truly don't want to.
• All of the Rommely and Nolan family members, but especially Sissy's life, at least until the end of the novel when things start looking better for everyone.
• The moment where Francie realizes that Lee has been playing her.
  • And how Katie handles it—when Francie addresses her as "mother" rather than "mama", she realizes that Francie has grown up and responds to her as another woman rather than as a child and doesn't condemn her when Francie reveals that she almost slept with Lee.
    • Lee's poor wife, knowing what he did to Francie and marrying him, right before he gets shipped off to war. Not only that, but he apparently didn't care enough about her to go home to spent time with her except to hastily marry before being shipped off.
• The night Francie is born, Johnny is so worried about Katie and the baby that he forgets to go to his job as night custodian of a schoolhouse. The pipes freeze and burst, flooding most of the building, and Johnny gets fired. It was a good job that would have allowed the family to live comfortably. Instead, he drifts back to being a singing waiter, getting intermittent jobs, while Katie works as a janitress and other jobs, and his children have to drop out of school to work after he dies.