Flowers By Alice Walker Allegory

In the flash fiction story of “Flowers” by Alice Walker, every sentence contains a specific meaning. Throughout the story, she uses language in order to establish her central theme - or what she desired the reader to learn. Specifically, Walker uses an allegory to describe that though one should have hope, one should not be naive to see the reality. In “Flowers” there are a multitude of allegories in this one piece. The literal allegory is easily recognized in the story. Walker includes the word, “sharecropping” to tell the reader that the setting of this piece occurs post Civil War but pre 1900s- (1870s-1890s). The literal allegory requires historical knowledge before accurately discovering the depth of the allegory. During this time, slaves were newly freed through the Emancipation …show more content…
Myop, a small girl of 10 years old, who believed that food appeared on the table, who picked flowers for amusement, recognized what her family was classified as in the real world through one man’s death. Just as Walker desires, Myop changed from naive and hopeful for her future too aware of her surroundings and realistic. The quote, “Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over.”, establishes this point. When Myop saw this tall man, decapitated, tortured, horrifically murdered, Walker seems to insinuate that Myop then understood the world she lived in. Myop laying down her flowers parallels Mayor getting rid of her preconceived notion of the world where everything was bright and where no one could ever be hurt. Alice Walker was born during a time of discrimination and pain. Though it was not as bad as the late 1800s, the 1940s encouraged segregation of whites and blacks. African Americans continued to be tortured if they broke custom. Walker may have been inspired to write “Flowers” by her personal experience of one day becoming aware of what the reality was; that equality did not exist in this