The Flowers By Alice Walker

In the short story “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, the reader follows a young girl named Myop who goes away from her home on a sharecropper’s farm into a forest, only to find the dead body of a lynched man. The story is written in such a style that the reader never sees the ending coming. Utilizing the elements of imagery and symbolism, Walker showcases the shock value of a girl realizing that life is not the same for her as it is for everyone else. From the very start, Myop is clearly unaware of the horrors that the world offers. Myop loves the outdoors, as “she felt light and good in the warm sun” (lines 6-7), and she is so completely unaware of what goes on in the outside world that even just “the harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise” (lines 3-4). Myop’s …show more content…
Myop notes that “the days had never been as beautiful as these” (line 2) and very clearly seems to love the outdoor area of the farm, as she skips around the farm singing and tapping a stick on the fencing. The forest continues her love of the outdoors, as she recalls that “her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves” (lines 14-15), and winds up over a mile away from her home, the farm, searching for flowers. The final scene in the short story, of Myop discovering the dead man, symbolizes growing up- or rather, adulthood- as it hits her that life is not as it is on the farm. The dead man symbolizes the wrong in the world, and as soon as the innocent Myop discovers him, she grows up, and realizes that the summer, another symbol of childhood, is over. This short story relies heavily on imagery and symbolism. All of the build up in the novel, all of the images and symbols showcase the overall theme and meaning of “The Flowers”, which is childhood and growing up. Alice Walker utilizes this theme, and all of the symbolism and imagery, to prepare the reader for the ending of the