Ruined

I am working on a task right now that involves examination of children's books.  The task requires me to look at a pre-21st century book that is considered controversial as well as two other non-controversial books, one from the 21st century and one from any point in time.  I found that The Giving Tree is considered controversial.  How sad is that?  The book is all about a boy who loves a tree and a tree who loves a boy and gives all that is has to the boy throughout his life. The tree gives and receives little or nothing in return and it gives repeatedly.  I love the story as it demonstrates much of what I experience as both a child to my parents who so willingly gave to me, and also as a parent and my desire to provide for and love my children.  Why would this be controversial?  Well, good question. There is a professor out there who has her classes read this book at the beginning of each semester and then engages them in exploring the book once again while considering gender inequality.  It is said that the tree represents girls and women while the boy represents boys and men. When you read it in that light it kind of changes things and suddenly you see women as being oppressed and taken advantage of by men in pursuit of their own desires with no thought of what their actions do to the woman.  That is kind of a sad interpretation of the story.  I wonder if that thought ever entered the mind of Shel Silverstein when he wrote the story?  Perhaps it did, I don't know.  I do know that I like the idea of reading the book with the mindset of serving and loving others. Certainly we can all give of ourselves to help those around us regardless of what our gender is.  We can give of ourselves and give again.  The law of reciprocation says that when someone does something nice for us, we want to do something nice for them in return.  That doesn't fully fit the narrative in this book but maybe it is something that could be focused on instead of gender inequality.  I don't know, I understand the message of the lesson and the challenge of the task I am working on, however, I don't know that I want to focus on something that never even popped into my mind before as it relates to the aforementioned book.  That thought kind of ruins it for me.