Family

     What is family? Is it defined by blood, or by the care someone provides? Family can be people related to you or maybe just a neighbor. Your "family" are the people that deep down, would do anything and everything for you. Yet, it is your decision to give the same love back. Only people special in your heart can make the final cut. So yes, family can be anybody, but not just anybody. A member of a family has to care for a person immensely. Family is greatly represented in both A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith and "Stone Soup" by Barbara Kingsolver.
     In A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Katie shows immense love for her children. She will do anything to make sure her children have a bright future. She is shown multiple times fighting through hardships to make sure her children will be perfect. First, she makes sure Francie gets through her sickness and lives past her first years. "I know she'll live, I'll make her live." Then she is shown pushing her son's determination so that he pursues a life of medicine. "I'll make him be a doctor." Someone who shows that much passion for someone is family. Katie would walk to the ends of the Earth just to make sure her children's life isn't as bad as her's is.
    In "Stone soup" Kingsolver explains how a family could be anybody. She also notes "Don't judge a family by how they seem or act" She is telling us how that an unconventional family really isn't unconventional, because they love each other's  and that is all that a family really is, people who love each lover deeply, as stated before. If they care for each other then they are a family.
      In the end, that is the function of a family. To be an emotional backbone for one another. To be there in times of need for one another. To cry with someone or share joy with someone. To be in a family you must love the other person to unrealistic extents.A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is based around the art and structure of a family. Without it there would be no story! Without family most of the world would go psychotic and spiral into a world of madness! Thankfully, there is family. Thankfully, we do have people watching our backs and make sure we don't go insane. That is one wonder of this world people will never understand. Why people love each other so much they would sacrifice themselves. I think it's not to be questioned.