Alice Walker: Setting as a Developmental Tool How would you expect one to feel when discovering a dead man’s body? What if someone has a clashing world with that of her daughter causing a severed relationship? Alice Walker is the world-renowned author of both novels, like “The Color Purple” and short stories like “The Flowers”. She developed both conflicts in two of her literary works. In ‘The Flowers” and ‘Everyday Use” Walker uses setting to develop the conflict of the texts. Alice Walker uses integral setting to develop conflict in “The Flowers” and “Everyday Use” similarly using a specific time period. In “Flowers” Walker clearly identifies the setting through her subtle hints at the time period which the short story is set. For example,
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In “The Flowers” Walker starts the story with positive and calming imagery to introduce the setting. She writes “She found in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds,” (The Flowers 1). But, as the story continues and the conflict is beginning to develop the imagery switches to becoming negative going along with the conflict. For example, towards the end of the short story Walker writes “When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and the debris Myop saw that he’d (dead man) had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones,” (The Flowers 1). This now dark imagery influences the heaviness of the conflict and develops the serious of it when relating to Myop’s loss of innocence. To continue, in “Everyday Use” Walker can develop the conflict through setting by using imagery as well. When Dee arrives at the house she describes the benches of the table; “’I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,’” (Everyday Use 7). This little line of imagery develops the narrator’s dislike of her daughter’s new way of life since she is trying too hard to appreciate her heritage when she didn’t do so before. This demonstrates the conflict of clashing relations and worlds within the story. Also, when Dee took the dasher the narrator goes on to create a picture of its heritage. “You didn’t even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was a beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in a yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived,” (Everyday Use 7). Her description of the
In “The Flowers” Walker starts the story with positive and calming imagery to introduce the setting. She writes “She found in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds,” (The Flowers 1). But, as the story continues and the conflict is beginning to develop the imagery switches to becoming negative going along with the conflict. For example, towards the end of the short story Walker writes “When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and the debris Myop saw that he’d (dead man) had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones,” (The Flowers 1). This now dark imagery influences the heaviness of the conflict and develops the serious of it when relating to Myop’s loss of innocence. To continue, in “Everyday Use” Walker can develop the conflict through setting by using imagery as well. When Dee arrives at the house she describes the benches of the table; “’I never knew how lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,’” (Everyday Use 7). This little line of imagery develops the narrator’s dislike of her daughter’s new way of life since she is trying too hard to appreciate her heritage when she didn’t do so before. This demonstrates the conflict of clashing relations and worlds within the story. Also, when Dee took the dasher the narrator goes on to create a picture of its heritage. “You didn’t even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was a beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in a yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived,” (Everyday Use 7). Her description of the