Mother Knows Best essays

Mother Knows Best essays In the novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith, Katie Nolan continually demonstrates strong leadership for her family. Her ambitions include creating a bank to support her family, educating Francie and Neely, and most importantly showing strong leadership. Throughout the novel Katie Nolan adds money to the tin can bank, sacrificing food, status and material goods to provide a portion of land for her family. It takes a lot of perseverance and struggle to fill the can, but she always finds a way. She has a, Fierce desire for survival. Katie is very tough and passes her traits onto her children and teaches them to deal with hardships, but she also strives hard to educate them. The wise Mary Rommely says, The secret lies in reading and writing. Katie follows her instructions and reads with the children everyday to maintain her promise. Despite cruelty and other issues, she manages to find time to spend with them and educate them. She believes that education is the key to a happy and successful life. She did not want them to lead a suffering life as she did. She continues with her teachings and sends Francie and Neely through high school. She also succeeds in having Francie discover, The magic of learning things. This makes Katie stand out, adding to her perseverance, wisdom. Finally and most importantly, Katie is a leader and made out of thin invisible steel. She leads her family out of many troubles at the same time of comforting and standing up for them. Though her family is in desperate need of money she repeatedly refuses charity, unwilling to be brought down to a lower level. She cleans floors overtime to supply her childrens piano lessons. All these things will provide a great foundation for her children to blossom. Without Katie Francie may have never changed. Other important characters that added a lot to the story include Francie, whose coming of ...