Somebody finally fixed the ending of The Giving Tree.

Somebody finally fixed the ending of The Giving Tree.

This weekend on Instagram, I discovered something I never knew I always wanted: a helpful update to Shel Silverstein’s psychotic parenting allegory The Giving Tree, in which a tree gives up e…

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This weekend on Instagram, I discovered something I never knew I always wanted: a helpful update to Shel Silverstein’s psychotic parenting allegory The Giving Tree, in which a tree gives up every molecule of itself to help some ungrateful kid, and we’re supposed to think it’s good and noble or something. Yeah, you remember.

Anyway, playwright and screenwriter Topher Payne has now fixed it. The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries is part of Payne’s “Topher Fixed It” series, which was created in support of The Atlanta Artist Relief Fund, and which offers printable alternate endings for certain problematic children’s books. (He also accepts tips.) “Ever settle in with the young person in your life to read one of your childhood favorites, like The Giving Tree or The Rainbow Fish, only to get halfway through it and go, “Wait, WHAT?” Payne writes. “Well, good news. I fixed it.” Also included is a fix for that most frightening of children’s books (in my opinion): I’ll Love You Forever.

“Just read The Giving Tree as usual, right up to the point where the Boy comes hustling for a house. Then feel free to print these pages and read as an alternative to everything that follows,” Payne writes. I think I’ll do just that. (Eat your heart out, Ryan Gosling.)

 

[The Cunting Death]

The book also inspired a pretty good episode of Billy and Mandy

Tbf Shel Silverstein has a pretty damn good legacy that Topher can't completely ruin.

 

[SBG]

Some people get way too used to having happy endings put on everything, idea of something just being sad fills them with disgust. It's like there's some level of autism at work where they figure putting a sad thing in means you thought it was a good thing to have happen.

 

[Exceptionally Exceptional]

Robot Chicken did it better.

 

[LordofTendons]

As a kid I always thought the tree was stupid for letting the kid do all that shit and the boy needed a spanking. I haven't changed my mind.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

Some people get way too used to having happy endings put on everything, idea of something just being sad fills them with disgust. It's like there's some level of autism at work where they figure putting a sad thing in means you thought it was a good thing to have happen.

Trigger Warning: Animal Cruelty

Old Yeller dies at the end. They shot him in cold blood. This kind of violence is unacceptable viewing for all audiences. 0/10

 

[ColtWalker1847]

He also wrote a ...weird... sequel to Boy Named Sue.

For those not in the know, Uncle Shelby is a confirmed TERF.

Not his greatest work and he was clearly just having fun with being silly for silly's sake. But lolmad and it probably explains why an artist of the Atlantavkij Kosomol want to "improve" his more notable work.

 

[Mariposa Electrique]

The giving tree became a communist giving tree...gave too much and everyone died.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

Some people get way too used to having happy endings put on everything, idea of something just being sad fills them with disgust. It's like there's some level of autism at work where they figure putting a sad thing in means you thought it was a good thing to have happen.

It's like the backlash against MEAN SPIRITED HUMOR.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I'm not even sure this "rewrite" was made for children, now that I think about it. Knowing these types, it probably wasn't.

he wrote it for himself, which he imagines is the same as writing for children, because his opinions are Correct and Wholesome, which means it's all the more important they be imparted to children

 

[mold]

The giving tree became a communist giving tree...gave too much and everyone died.

this is, for real, one of the reasons we are so fucked as a society right now

 

[zachs fair]

He couldn't even replicate the writing style and prose of the original. It's so jarring to read up to the original text and then this faggot's excessive word vomit cuts in. The tone, vocabulary, and even the spacing is different.

Goddamn people need to learn to write beyond a 2nd grade level before claiming to "fix" an actual author's work.