Share your literary essay with the rest of the students that chose this short story. Take some time to read 2 or 3 other essays. Comment on them. Your comment should be about something you noticed them doing well from our lessons. For example, "You did a really good job explaining your evidence
“The Flowers” by Alice Walker is a short story about a 10-year-old girl named Myop who discovers a dead body on her journey through the woods. Myop goes into the woods one day as a happy little girl, but comes out very stunned and unsure. Her goal traveling into those woods was to pick a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Although I believe that in the end of the story, the flowers she takes along with her are a symbol of her own lifetime and a possibility of losing her innocence. The author may have used the flowers as a symbol to express the theme and make it easier to interpret. Myop’s flowers in the end show her losing her innocence and how she may be growing up to find that the world is not always such a peaceful and happy place.
ReplyDeleteWhen Myop first skips happily into the woods on what she thought was a normal day, she soon encounters a dead body that was left decaying in the woods. Alice Walker really emphasizes the fear that Myop has when she finds this body. She creates untraditional details that help us imagine what Myop must be feeling, and what the body looks like. “When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he’d had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overall had turned green.” These few sentences pulled directly from the story are good pieces of evidence to show how Walker used her sense of details very nicely throughout the short story. The words specifically provide a nice image in my head so that I can clearly picture what the body may look like. This means that Alice Walker used imagery when writing “The Flowers.” I feel that imagery is very important in this story. With this story being as short as it is with not as many words, it is helpful to at least have some details to rely on for that imagery. The imagery also helps me tie back into the theme. For example, when Alice Walker explains what the body looks like and the setting of where Myop finds the body, this may show how Myop is discovering that not everything is always so peaceful in the world. With the body being described how it is, it could say a lot of things to Myop on how people were treated, or still are being treated negatively. She could be getting a little look at how things might truly be, or how the world around her acts upon itself.
The setting of the story may also help to interpret the theme or claim. In the beginning of the story, it seems to be a happy day as Myop goes skipping into the woods to pick a beautiful bouquet of flowers. However, we already know that it doesn’t go so smoothly. In fact, it goes in the complete opposite direction. “Very near where she’d stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle, she noticed a raised mound, a ring around the rose’s root. It was the rotted remains of a noose.” This scene from the short story shows just how the setting is important. When she sees the noose, the author continues to write how Myop then possibly saw what is used to hang someone. This makes us readers continue to think that the dead man decaying in the woods must have been hung. As we continued to think this, I did some background research on the author, Alice Walker. We found that she may have based this story off the fact that racism was an issue. This makes sense when we really think deeply about it. Therefore, with the idea of racism playing into the story, once again, it ties back into our theme of Myop losing her innocence and growing up. This just proves how the setting of the story is very important when relating it to the theme.
I believe that the author used lots of symbolism when writing this short story. I think that the bouquet of flowers in particular is the main symbol. The flowers that Myop has are going with her throughout the entire story. So, they could be a sign of her growing up and learning new things both about herself and the rest of the world. “Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over.” These are the very last two sentences of the short story. I believe that these last two sentences are the most important. Walker takes us through the whole story as if it was a big mystery the entire time. However I think otherwise. When it states that Myop set down her flowers and that the summer was over, I think this really means that she practically laid down her past, and is now growing up and moving on in life. It could also mean that she is laying down her innocence now that she is starting to discover negative things in the world, and she is leaving that woods with a whole new perspective on life. So, the flowers that she carries throughout the story, could be known as her innocence or her younger self.
ReplyDeleteLastly, another possible theme for this short story could be known as racism. Although, I am still certain that the theme of “The Flowers” by Alice Walker is loss of innocence. In the actual story, there are not very many hints, or facts to why the story may be about racism. However when we did some background research on the author, we found how the story could possibly be about racism. If we didn’t even look at information about Alice Walker, we probably would have no idea how this story could be about racism. The facts just don’t add up through the plot of the story. So, the theme must be about Myop losing her innocence and growing up.
In the end, Myop’s short journey through the woods tells a huge story and teaches us reader’s a new lesson. Myop’s flowers may have seemed so unnecessary in the beginning of the short story, but in the end turned out to be the biggest meaning of it. All of these factors throughout the story prove how Myop could be losing her innocence and growing up into a “new” world. “The Flowers” by Alice Walker isn’t just a short story that needs to be read. It is a story that needs to be heard.
The Flowers By: Alice Walker
ReplyDeleteMeredith Shanks
The short story The Flowers in by Alice Walker. The story takes place in the 1950 in Missouri. Myop lives in a little house and her family works as sharecroppers. A little girl named Myop goes outside to pick flowers. Myop goes where she has never been trying to find flowers. On her way home Myop steps on to a body of a man that has clearly been hung. The author puts many hidden messages into the story. Myop starts out as a girl going to pick flowers and ends with the loss of her childhood. I believe the theme of The Flowers by Alice Walker is loss of childhood innocence.
Myop is a little girl about nine years old and she leaves her small farmhouse to go pick the flowers. She starts out as an innocent little girl but by the end of the story it is clear she has been changed forever. Myop leaves the house and goes to pick the autumn flowers before the winter comes. She goes to a place she has never been before and steps right on to a dead man. “It was when she stepped smack into his eyes.”Myop stepped on to his body and then lost her childhood. I think the moment she steps on to the body it is like she steps out of her childhood innocence and steps into a life forever haunted by what she did. Myop went too far. Some could argue that the theme is enjoy your childhood because it could end soon, but the author points to it being the loss of childhood innocence. Myop life sounds like a hard one but she is still a little girl and her actions by going somewhere she has never been will hunt her. If she had gone to a place she knew then maybe she would have never stepped into a life hunted by a dead man.
The author puts lots of hidden symbolism into this short story. One short story can hold lots of secrets. Myop steps on the body and she will be forever hunted by it. She has lost her childhood innocence, the author even said so. “Myop laid down her flowers”. “ And the summer was over.” I think the author is trying to push so many messages out to the reader through two simple sentences. When Myop laid down her flowers I think that shows she put down her childhood. The author also said and then the summer was over I think means her childhood was over. Myop lost her childhood innocence. One could argue that the theme is racism can affect young people forever. But I believe the author is saying Myop laid down her flowers and her childhood was truly over. Myop will be treated differently because she stepped out of her childhood early. She will be hunted forever.
The author Alice Walker creates a great picture in this story. I'm a little girl who lives with her parents who are sharecroppers and live in a tiny hut. Myop goes to pick the flowers and steps on the body. The author uses imagery to show how horrifying the body looks and how Myop loses her childhood innocence. “It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a yelp of surprise.” “He’d had large white teeth, all of them cracked and broken, long fingers and broken bones.” Alice Walker creates a picture, a picture that made Myop lose her childhood innocence.
After seeing the body she was left with that horrible image in her mind. Myop lost her childhood innocence forever.
The story The Flowers is trying to teach a lesson about this little girl. I think the theme of the story is loss of childhood innocence.The authors use hidden symbolism, imagery, and figurative language to show the theme is loss of childhood innocence. The author wants to show the theme so she uses different things like imagery to show loss of childhood innocence. Myop was just a little girl and then becomes a girl who has stepped on a dead body. Myop will be forever hunted by the dead. “ Myop laid down her flowers.”
“And the summer was over.”