Alice Walker Short Story Analysis

Alice Walker explores Myop’s development of being a little girl in her own world to facing rough and sad reality. Myop is a ten-year-old African American girl and is in her own little world but when she goes into the woods by herself and comes across a dead body, she realizes that life isn’t what she lived every day, it’s way different and she just faced reality. In the short story,

Myop enjoys her days on the farm as she plays with animals, gathers flowers, and marvels at the beauty summer brings. Curiosity and a sense of adventure drives Myop to explore on her own: “Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes.” It is then that she stumbles into the now decapitated remains of a dead man, and the world has suddenly changed for her. Alice Walker wrote, “Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over.” She left the flowers she had gathered, and the world was no longer as beautiful a place as she had once thought. At the end of the story summer was over resembling how Myop has left her innocence behind. There wasn't fear, only surprise, and a new sense of

As the literal meaning of the story, “The Flowers” is about the lynching of African Americans at that time. Even though this story is fiction, it definitely represents what could have happened in that day in age. It is historically accurate in that it very well could have happened and most probably did happen based on the time period it was written. The lynching of African Americans was a huge problem at that time in the south. Black men were being blamed for crimes they did not commit and were hanged for it without proof. Racism and segregation were ramped in the United States. Thus, inducing the civil rights movement that would fight for the end of segregation and racism. In the story itself, there were signs of how common it was for a black man to be lynched at the time. When Myop stumbles across the body of a recently lynched black man, she immediately realizes what had happened to him and does not really freak out. As expressed in the book, the moment she realized what she had stepped on she let out a little yelp of surprise but then took interest in her discovery. This reaction insinuates that it was almost normal to see such a thing. In the end, she laid down her flowers next to the man and continued on her way home. On the other hand, this story can be taken for more than its literal meaning.

Added to this, the writer’s use of symbolism strengthens this idea of attractiveness and inexperience, Myop’s name being the main symbol. Myop is short for Myopia. The name given to short-sightedness. This is used as a metaphor as Myop’s naivety, then as the story goes on Myop opens her eyes to see what the real world is like and the author mentions her name less. Another symbol used in paragraph 2 is the “warm sun”. This symbolises the light and life of the world. It is a time when people are supposed to be awake and no body should be sleeping but this is later contrasted further on in the story. All the setting and scenery described gives an image of the Garden of Eden- paradise – a place everyone wants to be, where nothing bad can happen up until one critical moment when Eve eats the apple and everything forever changes. This gives the reader an insight in to the rest of the story but still leaves them wondering what could happen next.

Walker shifts from the delightful imagery used earlier in the text into macabre and straightforward details. “His head lay beside him”, she writes, further stating “he'd had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken” (Walker 21). The impact on Myop of this situation is palpable because of Walker’s effective use of imagery. Although Walker never outright answers how the man’s teeth were broken or why a rotting noose is found lying next to the body, it is clear what the circumstances of death must have been. The explanation of what has happened to this man lies within what is not explained at all. In other words, the imagery provided is explanation enough. In the end, however, Walker does not digress in her usage of symbolism or imagery. She reserves the most significant symbol of the story for the final two sentences by writing about Myop’s response to her traumatic encounter with death that “Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over” which further drives the plot to conclusion (Walker, 21).

Walker tells a story of a young African American woman from Mississippi who is about to escape poverty and disgrace by marrying a man she barely knows, a Muslim from the North. Roselily has three children already when she marry 's her husband. Walker describes her as a woman with respect and compassion. This analysis will talk about Roselily during her poverty times, her marriage, and how she came to understand the changes in her life. Roselily did not understand a lot of things, however as time passed, she developed into a beautiful woman who came from poverty, and moved out of poverty by making some strong and powerful decisions. Decisions that made her life a better one. Throughout Roselily, Alice Walker uses mood, time and place in the setting to craft her story eloquently and effectively. This analysis will analyze the setting and the theme.

The story begins with Mama waiting in the yard for her eldest daughter Dee to return. Mama’s yard is an extension of her living room: the dirt ground flows into the small shack without separation. We are told little about Mama's husband; he is simply out of the picture and all of Mama's accomplishments, including the raising of her children, seem to be done by her own hand. Walker does not state the geographic setting outright, but we can surmise that Mama’s small farm is located somewhere in rural Georgia.

The descriptions of nature, trees and flowers permeate the textual body. Walker, a specialist in using images of garbled bodies relates the disgusting story of how a three year old has to die because of his color. Meridian carries the accountability of reporting it to the authorities and takes the child to the mayor’s office and “the people who followed Meridian it was as if she carried a large bouquet of long-stemmed roses” (Meridian 191). Walker executes an ideological tightrope act typical of her perceptive style of interrogating political dogma with a naturalist pastoral can dour. By concurrently mourning the loss of children and yet protecting women’s rights regarding reproductive discussion, she castigates black nationalists, who circumcised black woman’s life within domesticity, respectability, cultural racial pride and purity.

In “The Flowers,” Alice Walker uses imagery and symbolism to illustrate the innocence and later the loss of innocence of a young girl named Myop, which is short for Myopia. Myopia is defined as the inability to see things closely, or the inability to grasp the deeper meaning of something, which contributes to her innocence in the story. The story starts off with Myop enjoying a summer morning by gathering flowers when she suddenly stumbles across the decaying body of a man who seems to have been lynched. Myop then realizes that she can no longer be protected from the harsh realities of racial violence. This traumatic event shapes her life in a major way and she feels as if her childhood, like

The book named is a Biography of Alice Walker and her life including her books and the life she lived as a young black female in America. This book also looks at the thoughts and beliefs that Alice Walker had and how they could draw in and inspire such a large number of people that it did. The book also covers the less significant parts of Alice’s life such as her earlier life and her inspiration towards being who she was eventually. The book is written on both informational and influential stance.

2) In my found poem I was trying to illuminate the imagery and figurative language found throughout the book, and show how it enhances the reading experience. This passage was describing the sun setting and the night flowers blooming. By condensing the passage into a found poem the figurative language and imagery were highlighted, the not needed words cut out, and the words in general being switched around. In the poem there is one simile that was in the original passage that I think stands out, “Darkness poured out, covering trees till they were dim as the bottom of the sea.” I chose this scene because in my opinion poems are better when they’re full of figurative language, and this one is.

In Alice Walker's short story ¨Everyday Use¨, it shows us how what we value and the choices we make shape our identity. Mrs. Johnson and her daughter Maggie wait for Mama´s younger daughter Dee and her boyfriend. Maggie and her mother picture seeing a wonderful woman, but when Dee arrives, she surprises them by wearing traditional African clothes, changing her name, and having them meet her Muslim boyfriend. Dee forgot about her background and recovered her African heritage. As Dee was a child, she was disgusted of her mother’s way, but now she appreciates the house and asks to take the quilt made by her grandmother. Maggie agrees to let Dee take the quilt but the Mama refuses, Dee got upset and left, and explains that Mama

Myop is a ten year old girl living back in the old days, where slaves are still there. She has a great time, while skipping around and thinking, “That the days had never been as beautiful as these”.

The tension rises at twelve o’clock as Myop finds herself surrounded by “the strangeness of the land” which makes her want to turn back to the “peacefulness of the morning.” At this time, Myop senses that something is not right and desires to go back to the world that she knows. As she is returning back home, it is there that she meets him. Because she grew up in a sharecropper’s family it is not her first time seeing death. In fact, she probably witnessed death just about every day. When her foot got caught in his face, “she reached down, unafraid, to free herself.” Even when she apprehended that it was a man, she only “gave a little yelp of surprise.” It is not until she realizes that this man died from a violent act that she changes from an innocent naïve child to a girl who is more aware of the world around her.

Walker is the daughter of a sharecropper who lived in the south. As a child she endured