Critical Analysis Of Alice Walker's 'The Flowers'

Writers and poets often spread deep meaning in ordinary things: bowl can represent our parents’ heritage, food can represent our relationships with people and chocolate bar can be a symbol of childhood or green tea can be a symbol of love. Those simple things can be really meaningful, but mostly all authors understood the meaning of those objects and the value of the moments that they had lived only after several years. To take things for granted is a human nature, isn’t it?

Marigolds by Eugenia Collier is about a woman named Lizabeth looking back on her past, specifically the moment and things leading up to when she became an adult. “Chaotic emotions of youth” as she calls it are what really lead to the main event and are caused from confusion. In the story she as well as other children don’t understand how something like their neighbor, Miss.Lottie’s, marigolds could be so beautiful amid such a poverty-stricken, dilapidated town. She also does not understand where she belongs in her family after witnessing a huge role change between both her mother and father. These along with peer pressure are what made Lizabeth embrace those chaotic emotions and childishly act out in a violent way mutilating and destroying

Walker’s essay shows the dehumanization and abuse that black women have endured for years. She talks about how their creativity was stifled due to slavery. She also tells how black women were treated more like objects than human beings. They entered loveless marriages and became prostitutes because of the injustice upon them. Walker uses her mother’s garden to express freedom, not only for her but for all the black women who had been wronged. Walker described her mother as radiant when she was planting, her work outshining the wrongdoings done to her and the people before her. The garden was where her mother could make truly make “art.” The garden was also a representation of the creativity of the women who hold a talent close to their heart

In the exposition of "The Flowers," Walker presents the story of a young African-American girl's view of life-everything is wonderful. As the narrator informs the reader, Myop sees the world through rose tinted glasses in the first few paragraphs of the short story; being only ten, "nothing existed for her but her song, a stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta of accompaniment (Walker 2)." The aforementioned diction suggests that she holds a simple view of life, not really caring about much else other than what she is doing in the present moment. This can be attributed to her young age and lack of exposure to the suffering present in the world, as during one's childhood years, often the most important things to children

Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.

In the short story “The Flowers”, Alice Walker sufficiently prepares the reader for the texts surprise ending while also displaying the gradual loss of Myop’s innocence. The author uses literary devices like imagery, setting, and diction to convey her overall theme of coming of age because of the awareness of society's behavior.

Alice Walker’s story “Roselily” is about hardships and doing what is best for the ones you love. The story elegantly shows Roselily’s emotions and thoughts about her marriage through diction and symbolism. These literary devices portray an unsure mother about her decision to marry a religious man for the sake of her children and her future.

Gwen Harwood’s poems ‘At Mornington’ and ‘The Violets’ mirror ideas of circulatory nature of life and relationships between contrasting themes. Through images and references to certain motifs, two distinct stories and journeys are reflected, ‘At Mornington’s’ journey of life and death, and ‘The Violets’ story of the squandering of opportunities. The portrayal of certain voices and the displaying of contrasting ideas, the two poems have both similar and dissimilar aspects.

“Everyday Use” by Alice Walker is a short story containing a first-person point of view, narrated by the mother in the story. “The mother” is not named in the story, yet holds an important role in being the protagonist while also incorporating vital details of the characters’ emotions, views, and ideas of each other. The narrator tells the audience everything she knows about the other two main characters, giving the audience insight on how to view these characters in the story. Walker does a great job using two specific literary elements in “Everyday Use” to pinpoint the story’s theme. In “Everyday Use”, Walker develops the theme of the importance of Christ-like behavior by unifying these literary elements: point of view and characterization.

There are different events in life that shape who a person is and is going to be. As teenagers we surely go through these experience but, don’t find out how exactly the event or events impacted our lives. In the fictional book Marigolds by Eugenia Correy the protagonist reviews a significant event that deeply changed her life. Lizabeth, the narrator and protagonist of the story recalls her adolescent years in the true definition of poverty. Her perspective is then changed during the the summer of the Great Depression era due to Miss Lottie, her marigold, and the lost of childlike innocence. Two crucial universal themes for life are taken from this story. Firstly, any situation can be seen in two perspectives,

“Everyday Use” is one of the most popular stories by Alice Walker. The issue that this story raises is very pertinent from ‘womanist’ perspective. The term, in its broader sense, designates a culture specific form of woman-referred policy and theory. ‘womanism’ may be defined as a strand within ‘black feminism’. As against womansim, feminist movement of the day was predominately white-centric. A womanist is one who expresses a certain amount of respect for woman and their talent and abilities beyond the boundaries of race and class. “Everyday Use” can be seen as a literary representation of this concept. “Everyday Use” is a story of a mother and her two daughters- Dee and Maggie.

In the short story “The Chrysanthemums” John Steinbeck shows how a woman, Elisa Allen, is emotionally disappointed with her life. Elisa feels that her husband does not appreciate her womanly needs and not having children makes her feel that she has an unfulfilling life. Elisa finds a way to clear her thoughts on her life by tending her flower garden and creating beautiful chrysanthemums. The use of symbolism is used throughout the John Steinbeck's short story “ The Chrysanthemums” with the flowers and the Salinas Valley. Steinbeck uses symbolism to show how Elisa Allen feels with her emotional needs as a women.

Elisa’s daily life includes tending to her prized possession, Chrysanthemums, but throughout the story the deeper meaning behind these flowers comes to life. Through her eager and aggressive hard work, the small Chrysanthemums seemed to “easy for her energy”(Steinbeck 1). The flowers symbolize her strength and the power that she

Walker’s “The Flowers” illustrates Myop’s innocence and optimism though the application of flowers, and precise order in which important information is revealed. Even at the climax of the story flowers are described in detail, despite there being more climactic aspects within the same sequence. The narrator describes the area surrounding the dead man with little detail; describing only the man himself, a noose, and single pink rose : “Myop gazed around the spot with interest. 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… Myop laid down her flowers.” (Walker 1). Myop recognizes the noose after the flower, despite it being what most would consider a more . Therefore, through the her specific decision to reveal important information gradually, Walker discreetly reveals Myop’s youth and innocence.