Like the tree that receives so little care and nourishment, the people of the Williamsburg neighborhood survive and often thrive in such extreme poverty that many people live without adequate food, working only the most menial jobs, earning a pittance, and wearing threadbare clothing, through which they feel the biting cold. The tree represents the tenacity and strength of the poor inhabitants of the neighborhood, who survive with little food or money. It can thrive in cement and without water or fertilizer. It only grows in the poorest of neighborhoods and it grows no matter how poor the circumstances. The opening chapter of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn explains that the tree is a Tree of Heaven. In the courtyard of the third apartment building in Williamsburg where the Nolan family lives throughout most of Smith's novel, a tree is growing out of the cement.
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