the flowers by alice walker essay

A Summary and Analysis of Alice Walker’s ‘The Flowers’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Flowers’ is a 1973 short story by Alice Walker. Running to just two pages and under 600 words, the story can be regarded as an example of flash fiction or micro-fiction. It tells of a ten-year-old girl’s discovery, while out picking flowers, of the skeleton of an African-American man who was lynched in the Deep South of America.

Plot summary

Myop is a ten-year-old African-American girl living in the Deep South in the United States. In late summer, she is out collecting flowers near her family’s home. It is revealed that her family are sharecroppers : tenants whom a landlord permits to work a patch of land in exchange for a share of the crop they grow. This system was common in the South following the American Civil War and many freed African-American slaves became sharecroppers.

Carrying a stick, Myop skips along past the pigpen and henhouse her family keep, beating the rhythm of her song along the fence as she goes. Then she decides to forge her own path behind the family’s house, and finds some blue flowers which are strange to her. Picking an armful of the flowers as well as sprigs from other flowers she finds, she returns home at twelve o’clock, having sensed that the area she had walked to was not as pleasant as the usual places she walks to.

On her way home, she steps into the eye sockets of a skull lying on the ground. She realises that she’s come across the skeleton of a man who had been hanged from the nearby oak tree many years ago. His head is lying next to his body and the remains of the noose used to hang him are lying nearby, with vestiges of the rope still hanging from a branch of the tree.

The story ends with Myop laying down her flowers and the third-person narrator announcing that the summer was over.

Although ‘The Flowers’ runs to just a couple of pages, Alice Walker manages to build an extraordinary amount of power into the few paragraphs of her story, which uses symbolism to show, rather than tell, the emotional response Myop has to her discovery. This is a story about lost innocence, and in many ways a coming-of-age story, but it is also, of course, about the dark history of racism in the United States.

The narrator doesn’t tell us that the man whose skeleton Myop discovers was African-American, because such a detail doesn’t need to be openly stated: the history of lynchings in America tell the story for us.

The contrast between Myop’s happy-go-lucky mood at the beginning of ‘The Flowers’ and her very different mood by the end of the story, following her gruesome discovery, is handled without sentimentality or overstatement on Walker’s part. It’s true that Myop begins the story skipping lightly, with ‘excited’ tremors in her face, and singing and beating her stick in time to the tune. She is happy and blissfully unaware of the grim reality of America’s recent past, despite being herself African-American (note Walker’s description of her hand as dark brown).

Her discovery of the skeleton changes that, but note how she regards the remains of the body with ‘interest’ rather than, say, sadness or shocked horror. She is described as gazing , which suggests intentness and fascination, but not necessarily of the shocked kind.

We cannot even be sure that she intends the laying down of the flowers to be interpreted as a symbol of respect, in the way mourners put flowers on the graves of loved ones.

And yet the fact that she does not drop the flowers but carefully lays them down certainly suggests a kind of awed reverence for the man and the grim fate to which he was subjected. It’s clear she has pieced together what happened to him when she examines the spot and finds the remains of the noose on the branch of the tree.

It’s also obvious that the final words of the story reflect Myop’s loss of innocence, rather than just the end of the season: the summer really is over, and there will be no more days of ‘golden surprise’ for her, or at least none that will gleam quite so brightly.

Myop’s name, which suggests myopia or short-sightedness, is intended to convey her imperfect child’s-eye view of the world around her. And yet it is unclear how much she has now understood. We as readers can deduce in seconds that the man was African-American and that’s why he was lynched from the oak tree.

But can a ten-year-old girl, even a girl whose family have faced the same kind of prejudice? Or has she understood the history of racism in the South, but before it has only existed in the abstract for her, whereas now the awful and unavoidable reality has been brought home, almost literally on her doorstep?

The fact that the nine paragraphs of ‘The Flowers’ can prompt these questions, and can carry such force even while Walker resists the temptation to hammer home her ‘message’ or sentimentalise the situation, is a testament to the writing, the careful use of symbolism, and the subtle way in which Walker enacts a shift from blissful innocence in the first half of the story towards a kind of epiphany in the closing paragraphs of the story.

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The Flowers by Alice Walker

How it works

Written in the 1970’s The Blooms is set in the significant south of America and is about Myop, a little 10-year old African American young woman who examines the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different conditions. She forms from a third-individual perspective of Myop’s examination.

In the underlying two area Walker obviously underlines Myop’s faultlessness and energetic chastity. She skipped delicately from hen house to pigpen. This shows how lively Myop is in this setting, we understand she feels safe here, She felt light and incredible in the warm sun Her guiltlessness conveys a vitality to the peruser as it gives the character and the substance some spot to go.

We find that Myop is ten and is African American, in any case Walker does not present the peruser with clear substances yet rather reveals it to us.  The stick held in her diminish dim shaded hand, from the information given she empowers the peruser to shape a visual picture of Myop. Walker in like manner includes the setting around Myop, playing on the character’s resources. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash made each day and splendid surprise By doing this Walker reveals progressively about Myop’s understanding. We can see from the harvests used cotton and squash that her family are plainly farmers. We can similarly see how Myop’s resources are fundamental to her and her reactions to the yields around her superstar her tyke like attributes. A splendid astonishment that caused empowered little tremors keep running up her jaws. The aromas detectable all around set off Myop’s diverse resources and we can see that she is aware of these typical condition.

Walker by then begins reveals progressively about Myop’s understanding, The consumed sheets of her family’s sharecropper cabin. Here we find that Myop’s family are tackling a sharecropper farm, where they do have the land. We in like manner understand that they are probably poor, as this wasn’t exceptional starting at now. Walker begins to carry naturalistic pictures into the substance, Around the spring, silver greeneries and wild sprouts grew These photos have a calming effect on the section. Walker also familiarizes a racial reference in with the substance. They unobtrusive white air takes upset the pitiful dim size of soil. A post-pioneer analyst may feel this implies the white and dim segment that had surrounded at the time that this piece was created. The dull system is addressed by the thin soil, as it demonstrates how little a minority they were at the time. The water addresses the growing white system, exhibiting the extent of blacks to whites. The water clearly is deteriorating the earth, this addresses how the dim systems were managed, also as the water breaks up the soil the whites head out the blacks from various zones. I trust that this view is all around maintained in the substance and is fitting for the time the piece was formed and it’s personality made by.

Next Walker gives the peruser an alteration in bearing. Disregarding the way that Myop’s innocence is up ’til now addressed, Walker shows a darker setting. She had examined the forested territories behind her home various times. Walker makes a security by exhibiting that Myop thinks about these condition anyway she is vaguely paying special mind to hazard. This grows the weight in the section and makes pressure for the peruser. Before the completion of the fifth area Walker has made a diminish situation. The air was drenched, the calm close and significant. This bodes well beyond what many would consider possible of the segment and makes the peruser feel encased inside the substance. It in like manner fortifies Myop’s nonattendance of prosperity. The irregularity shows how untouchable her surroundings are to her.

Walker keeps showing faint pictures, Myop circles back to thehouse, the usage of circle exhibits that Myop can’t escape as the cycle is going. This may insinuate the life of dim residence pros. Walker demonstrates that it is hard for the dull workers to break out from the unending circle that they are compelled into. This accomplishes a pinnacle when Myop finds the dead man. We can therefore see that he is dead as Walker uses the past tense, he had been a tall man. We can see that the awful loss has defied a fierce end from the delineation we are given. He had colossal white teeth all of them split or broken. This could show that he had been beaten or hit some way or another or another before he was hanged. In this passage Walker uses shading,  White teeth, threads of blue and turned green’. This usage of shading makes a spooky air, and adds to the malicious twist that Walker has given the piece. At any rate with such an overabundance of going on around her Myop gives off an impression of being unaffected. Myop checked out the spot with interest, Myop still passes on the faultlessness that she had toward the beginning of the section. Walker gives the peruser one more separation inside the substance. Very close where she’d wandered into the head was a wild pink rose. This uniqueness in the substance influences it to develop. Walker uses the pink rose to address trust, as in spite of the way that the seed was ending up very nearly an old ruining body it suffer and had conveyed a superb rose. This exhibits even in the hardest events there is trust. A Marxist intellectual may view this as a depiction of the desire that numerous dim individuals expected to contain to vanquish the abuse they expected to take amid the 60s.

The last entry contains only a solitary line, this influences it to develop and is unmistakably indispensable. And the pre-summer was over, this symbolizes how Myop’s pre-adulthood is done and that she has lost her faultlessness. Walker stresses was as it give the idea a sensible consummation, putting the events already.

Walker delivers a wide scope of considerations and points in “The Flowers”. She generally bases on the lives and treatment of dim individuals at the time. I would agree with a post-pioneer observer, as I feel that Walker uses the substance to air her points of view on the treatment of dim and the segment among whites and blacks. Regardless of the way this could be seen as a Marxists perspective it trust that it is limited and can’t be associated with the whole substance.

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The Flowers

Alice walker, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Myop , a 10-year-old Black girl, lives with her family in a sharecropper cabin in the South sometime after the Civil War. One sunny, peaceful morning, she skips lightly away from her home and into the woods that she visits with her mother each autumn to gather nuts. Myop is drawn off the usual path and finds some “strange blue flowers ” that she gathers until her arms are full. She starts to feel uneasy in the woods and notes that the environment has become cold and silent. She wants to return home to the peace she felt earlier.

When Myop turns to leave, her foot becomes lodged in a skull . As she frees her foot, she is startled to see the features of a man. She notices his rotting body sitting next to the skull and considers who he was when he was alive. She notices a ring around a pink rose and realizes that it is the remnants of a noose, which she confirms by finding more remnants of the noose hanging from a nearby oak tree. As Myop comes to understand that this man was lynched, she lays down her armful of flowers, a signal that the summer has ended and, moreover, that her childhood innocence is gone.

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The Role of Symbolism in "The Flowers" by Alice Walker 

• Walker, A. (1973). In search of our mothers' gardens: Womanist prose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Davis, A. (1988). Alice Walker's "The Flowers." Explicator, 47(2), 57-59. https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.1988.11483605
• Fos, J. R. (2009). "The Flowers": An Exploration of Alice Walker's Use of Symbolism to Narrate the Journey Toward Self-Discovery. Inquiries Journal, 1(11). http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/142/2/the-flowers-an-exploration-of-alice-walkers-use-of-symbolism-to-narrate-the-journey-toward-self-discovery
• Harris, T. (2014). Symbolism in Alice Walker's "The Flowers." HubPages. https://discover.hubpages.com/literature/Symbolism-in-Alice-Walkers-The-Flowers
• Schultz, S. (2013). Alice Walker's "The Flowers": A Study Guide. Gale, Cengage Learning. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3630100045/GVRL?u=anon~a5c91f12&sid=GVRL

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The Flowers

28 pages • 56 minutes read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

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Essay Topics

Explore the evolution of color as each one is named in this short story—from the “golden surprise” of the summer harvest to the “bleached” fray of the noose . How do these colors underscore Myop’s relationship to her surroundings and the reciprocal effect that her surroundings have on her?

In her poetry, Emily Dickinson used the word noon to mean more than “the middle of the day” or “the time of day when a main meal is eaten.” She also used the word to symbolic effect to mean, at times, “the highest point of life” or “the culmination of something,” according to the Emily Dickinson Archive . Consider the time of day in Alice Walker’s “The Flowers.” How might you define the symbolic potential of twelve o’clock in context?

This story was included in the collection In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women. Consider, in contrast, that Myop is only 10 years old. In what ways is her encounter with the hanged man foundational to her becoming a Black woman? What lessons about love and trouble might she take with her into her Black womanhood?

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The Flowers

By alice walker, the flowers symbols, allegory and motifs, flowers (symbol).

Flowers, which are mentioned often in this story, are symbolic of Myop’s innocence. She is just ten years old, and at the beginning of the story, she is still a careless child, who likes running in the woods, playing in the yard, and singing songs. However, her innocence is as fleeting as a flower, and it ends on the day she finds a corpse and a noose.

The Woods (symbol)

The woods symbolize the world surrounding Myop, which can be both violent and beautiful. Myop had “explored the woods behind the house many times,” but, for the most part, she did it with her mother was nearby. That was the main reason why it felt like an adventure. However, on the day of the story, she goes alone and makes the terrifying discovery of the dead man—symbolizing the harsh realities of her own race from which her mother could not shield her forever.

The End of Summer (allegory)

At the end of the story, after Myop notices the noose next to the dead man, she lays down her flowers and the narrator declares that summer is over. Myop has undergone a tremendous transformation from an innocent child to a more mature person with a clear understanding of the world and its violence. Like the summer, her childhood is over now.

The Dead Man (symbol)

The dead man whom Myop finds is also a symbol of the violence faced by African-Americans. Myop does not know this man's name, nor his identity, but judging from the rotting noose she finds nearby, presumably he was lynched and murdered by a mob. His death—and his body, lying forgotten in the woods until a little girl literally steps on him—represents the many African-Americans who died due to racial hatred.

The Pink Rose (symbol)

A pink rose has grown up within the circle of the rotting noose on the forest floor. In contrast to the ugliness of the dead man (who, paradoxically, provides sustenance for it), the rose is beautiful and robust. This suggests that something beautiful might still come out of violence: in Walker's stories flowers often symbolize care, recovery, and redemption. Violence is not a final end, but rather a place of suffering from which to begin again.

The Flowers Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Flowers is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Myop lives in a sharecroppers cabin, why is this an important detail?

Through "The Flowers," Alice Walker portrays the condition of African-American people. Many of them, such as Myop and her family, are sharecroppers—in other words, they are paid a very small amount of money to engage in back-breaking labor on...

How can u explain mentioning the nose in flower story Alice Walker

Do you mean the "rose"?

WHat is the setting of this story as in Place (geographical location). Time (historical period, time of day, etc.), Weather conditions, Social conditions (customs, behaviours, speech, dress, mannerisms, etc.). Mood/ atmosphere.

Sorry, this is only a short-answer space. The short story takes place in the South after Reconstruction.

Study Guide for The Flowers

The Flowers study guide contains a biography of Alice Walker, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Flowers
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Essays for The Flowers

The Flowers essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Flowers by Alice Walker.

• Growing Up in "The Flowers" by Alice Walker

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• Introduction
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• Accusations of antisemitism and praise for David Icke

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — The Flowers — Symbolism In The Flowers By Alice Walker

Symbolism in The Flowers by Alice Walker

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Published: Aug 6, 2021

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