The Flowers by Alice walker PDF

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"The Flowers" is a short story written by Alice Walker that was first published in 1973 as part of the anthology In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (In Love and Trouble). It is only two pages long, with a total of 565 words. "The Flowers" is a novel about the carefree life of Myop, a ten-ye...

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The Flowers by Alice walker "The Flowers" is a short story written by Alice Walker that was first published in 1973 as part of the anthology In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women (In Love and Trouble). It is only two pages long, with a total of 565 words. "The Flowers" is a novel about the carefree life of Myop, a ten-year-old African American girl whose innocence is suddenly shattered when she discovers a gruesome secret. Although it's considered a classic example of flash fiction (which is very short stories of 500-1000 words or less), it's also frequently assigned reading in literature classes. In the short story "The Flowers," ten-year-old Myop skips around the property where her family lives, passing by a pigpen and a henhouse along the way. With a stick she holds in her dark brown hand (Walker indicates that this child is African-American), she taps out a tune on the fence surrounding her family's cabin, and she eventually heads into the woods that surround her family's cabin to sing. She looks at the ferns and the spring where her family gets water, and then she goes even further into the woods to look at more ferns. She comes across a bouquet of blue flowers, which she considers to be an unusual find. Her journey has taken her deep into the woods, about a mile from her home, by midafternoon. She has gathered the blue flowers in her arms and is holding them tightly in her hands. The atmosphere begins to appear gloomy and dark. Myop begins to make her way back to the house where she grew up. Suddenly, she finds herself walking through the skull of a deceased man. He has clearly been dead for a long time, as evidenced by the fact that only his dry corpse is left, and that much of his clothing has rotted. Myop notices that he was a tall man with broken teeth, and that he was wearing a hat. Myop notices that a beautiful pink rose has sprouted nearby and decides to take it home with her. Her attention is drawn to the strange ring that surrounds the object, and she realises that it is the remnant of a noose. She raises her eyes to the sky and notices yet another scrap of rope dangling from the tree. The story comes to a close with her laying down her flowers and declaring that summer is officially over for the year. 'The Flowers' is a short story by Alice Walker that appeared in her collection of short stories, In Love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women, which was published in 1973. It is regarded as a canonical example of flash fiction, which is defined as stories that are typically between 500 and 1000 words in length. "The Flowers" is a short story set in the Deep South of the United States of America that was first published in 1973 as part of a collection of short stories. It is the story of Myop, a ten-year-old girl who has lost her childhood innocence. Flowers are typically associated with happiness, but in this case, author Alice Walker uses them to represent the Myop's grief. Presented in third-person perspective, the story

depicts the conflict that exists between the fantasy of a child's mind and the reality of the world into which that child is thrust. In the story, Myop skips around the property where she and her family live, passing by a pigpen and a henhouse among other structures. With a stick she holds in her dark brown hand (Walker indicates that this child is African-American), she taps out a tune on the fence surrounding her family's cabin, and she eventually heads into the woods that surround her family's cabin to sing. She looks at the ferns and the spring where her family gets water, and then she goes even further into the woods to look at more ferns. She comes across a bouquet of blue flowers, which she considers to be an unusual find. Her journey has taken her deep into the woods, about a mile from her home, by midafternoon. She has gathered the blue flowers in her arms and is holding them tightly in her hands. The atmosphere begins to appear gloomy and dark. Myop begins to make her way back to the house where she grew up. Suddenly, she finds herself walking through the skull of a deceased man. He has clearly been dead for a long time, as evidenced by the fact that only his dry corpse is left, and that much of his clothing has rotted. Myop notices that he was a tall man with broken teeth, and that he was wearing a hat. Myop notices that a beautiful pink rose has sprouted nearby and decides to take it home with her. Her attention is drawn to the strange ring that surrounds the object, and she realises that it is the remnant of a noose. She raises her eyes to the sky and notices yet another scrap of rope dangling from the tree. The story comes to a close with her laying down her flowers and declaring that summer is officially over for the year. According to some sources, the name "Myop" comes from the Greek word "myopia," which means nearsightedness. This name most likely refers to Myop's inability to recognise the violence and danger that surrounds her at the beginning of the story— though, by the end of the story, she has grown in wisdom. Walker's 565-word story is notable for its conciseness as well as the amount of information that he manages to convey in such a short amount of time. For example, the narrator never explicitly states that Myop is African-American or that she lives in the South; instead, the narrator observes that the hand that holds the stick is dark brown, and the narrator describes Myop's family as sharecroppers, a title that was almost exclusively reserved for African-Americans at the time of the novel's publication in the South. Furthermore, the narrator never specifies how the man died, but the fact that his teeth were broken and a noose was discovered nearby suggest that he was the victim of a lynching. The story is clearly divided into two distinct parts. "Keen," "golden surprise," and "golden surprise" are all words that describe Myop's joyous skipping around the forest near her house in the first section of the story. The tone of the story changes

about halfway through when Myop comes across a bouquet of strangely coloured blue flowers, which, according to writer Rion Amilcar Scott, gives the story an unearthly feel, almost like a hallucination. The second section of the story is characterised by the use of words that have more negative connotations to them. In the air, there is a distinct "strangeness," and the atmosphere is "gloomy." Myop's sudden discovery of a man's corpse is foreshadowed by the narrator in this passage. Myop is initially unafraid of this new discovery, and instead is merely curious about it. However, when she notices that there is a noose nearby, she throws her flowers to the ground, and the narrator declares that summer has come to a close. The noose was a common tool in lynching, which was a form of organised murder of African-Americans in the southern United States during the early 20th century. It is never explicitly stated that Myop understands what the noose represents, but her change in demeanour suggests that she recognises it as a symbol of racial violence against people who look like her. Myop is like many African-American children in that she is happy and carefree until she realises the extent of violence that exists in her environment. Flowers appear on a number of occasions throughout the story. Flowers appear frequently in Walker's work, and they are associated with women as well as with beauty in the face of ugliness and death. Myop, on the other hand, discovers a beautiful pink rose within the rotting circle of the noose, which suggests that the ugliness of death resulted in the creation of something beautiful. White Americans' prejudice against African-Americans persisted even after the Union won the Civil War and slavery was declared illegal in the United States by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Lynching, which is the abduction and murder of African-Americans, was one of the manifestations of this prejudice. Lynching was a practise that was intended to keep African-Americans in a state of fear, forcing them to submit to the white population. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 4,743 lynchings took place in the United States between 1882 and 1968, with the vast majority taking place in the South. Someone who was considered "uppity" (a vague, pejorative term that included being economically successful, looking at or associating with white women, and refusing to accept the racist status quo) might be taken from their home by a white mob, tortured, and then killed by a group of white men and women. According to the available evidence, lynching victims were shot, dragged in front of automobiles, set on fire with gasoline, and executed in other horrific ways, though the most common method of execution was to hang the victim from a tree with a noose. A noose has become a symbol of lynching and racist violence throughout history. In some cases, the body of a lynched person was on display for several days after the incident. It is important to remember that lynchings took place outside of the legal system, and that the victims of lynchings had committed no legally recognised crime. The families and friends of lynching victims frequently attempted to use the legal system

to bring the murderers to justice, but the majority-white legal system ignored the testimony of African-Americans who were both witnesses and victims of the crime, and it refused to prosecute the white people who had shot and killed their relatives. It is disturbing to note that lynching was frequently performed in front of a large crowd, with the murderers posing for photographs with the victim's body and publicly celebrating the victim's death. Even though it is impossible to determine the race of the dead man Myop discovers due to the decomposition of his corpse, the noose found nearby suggests that he was a victim of lynching and was, as a result, an African American. Myop's discovery raises her awareness of the heinous history of lynching in the United States. "The Flowers," by Alice Walker, is a bildungsroman, or a story about coming of age. After an innocent African-American girl named Myop begins the story believing that the world is a peaceful place, she comes to realise that it is full of danger and violence by the story's conclusion. Walking through the woods alone, Walker observes that "her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves." In other words, whereas she had previously been protected by her mother, she is now on her own. A strangely coloured bouquet of flowers is picked up by Myop, who then finds himself accidentally walking into a human head. She realises that this is the property of a man who was lynched after noticing the rope dangling from a nearby tree. This loss of innocence prompts her to throw the flowers she is carrying to the ground and declare that summer has come to an end. Alice Walker portrays the plight of African-Americans in her short story "The Flowers." Many of them, such as Myop and her family, are sharecroppers, which means that they are paid a very small amount of money to perform back-breaking labour on other people's land in exchange for their labour. They are also subjected to frequent violence at the hands of white citizens, often for infractions that are minor in comparison to other races. When Myop discovers the rotting corpse of a man with a noose around his neck, she appears to realise that he has been murdered, though the moment of her realisation is not explicitly described. When confronted with a terrifying image of a corpse, Myop notices very specific details—for example, how "the buckles of his overalls had turned green" as a result of the corpse's prolonged exposure to the elements—and notes them down. The discovery of a strangely coloured bouquet of flowers occurs immediately before Myop discovers the body. This hyper-attention to detail, combined with the unearthly discovery of the flowers, suggests a disconnection from reality. Later, when Myop discovers the dead man, it is revealed that the young girl has been traumatised by the sudden encounter with death, which has provided her with a completely different perspective on the world and on herself as a result. Flowers, which appear frequently in this story and are symbolic of Myop's innocence, are mentioned several times. In the beginning of the story, she is only ten years old,

and she is still a carefree child who enjoys running through the woods, playing in the yard, and singing songs. Her innocence, on the other hand, is as fleeting as a flower, and it comes to an end the day she discovers a corpse and a noose. The woods represent the world that surrounds Myop, which can be both violent and beautiful at the same time. The woods behind the house were familiar territory for Myop, who had "explored them many times," but she had done so mostly with her mother close by. It was primarily for this reason that it felt like an adventure. Although she goes alone on the day in question, she makes the terrifying discovery of the dead man, which serves as a symbol of the harsh realities of her own race from which her mother could not protect her indefinitely, and which she must face on her own. At the conclusion of the story, after Myop notices the noose next to the dead man, she throws her flowers to the ground and the narrator declares that summer has come to a close. Myop has undergone a remarkable transformation from a helpless child to a more mature adult who has a clear understanding of the world and the violence that exists within its borders. Her childhood, like the summer, has come to an end. The dead man that Myop discovers is also a symbol of the violence that AfricanAmericans are subjected to. Myop does not know the man's name or identity, but based on the rotting noose she discovers nearby, she assumes he was lynched and murdered by a mob, which she reports to the police. His death—and the fact that his body was left forgotten in the woods until a little girl literally steps on him— represents the countless African-Americans who have died as a result of racial hatred in the United States. Within the circle of the rotting noose on the forest floor, a pink rose has sprouted and is now blooming. Its beauty and strength stand in stark contrast to the ugliness of the dead man (who, paradoxically, serves as its source of nourishment). This suggests that something beautiful can still emerge from a violent situation: flowers frequently appear in Walker's stories as symbols of care, recovery, and redemption. In reality, violence is not a final solution, but rather a place of suffering from which to start all over again. It is a beautiful sunny day when the story begins, and Myop is taking full advantage of it. The girl taps out "the beat of a song" on the fence surrounding the pigpen, according to the story. She described herself as "light and good in the warm sun." Myop was ten years old, and for her, nothing existed except her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta of musical accompaniment." However, the irony of this scene is that this day is not as idyllic as Myop would have you believe. This particular day, she is only aware of the beauty of the world around her, and she doesn't even notice "the rusty boards of her family's sharecropper cabin."

Each day was a golden surprise, as the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash were harvested, causing excited little tremors to run up her jaws as she opened her mouth to eat. The descriptions at the beginning of the story paint a picture of a country setting that is almost idyllic. Ample crop mentions indicate plenty, and Myop's excitement is almost tangible to the listener as he describes the harvest. The reader will eventually come to realise that Myop's situation is not quite as idyllic as it appears at first glance. With her back to the rusted boards of her family's sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence until it met the stream created by a nearby Spring. Despite the fact that Myop is still full of life and enthusiasm, her family is not wealthy, as evidenced by the rusted boards of their home. This shows that Myop's optimism and zest for life are derived from her family's circumstances, rather than as a result of them; in other words, her childhood innocence prevents her from seeing her family's material adversity for what it truly is. He had large white teeth, all of which were cracked or broken. He also had long fingers and very large bones, which Myop discovered when she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris." Except for a few threads of blue denim from his overalls, all of his clothes had rotted away by this point. "The buckles on the overalls had turned green," she explained. The appearance of the dead man is transformed through a series of images that are almost fragmentary in nature. Myop notices his broken teeth, his rotted clothes, and the green of his buckles. He also notices his rotted clothes. It is obvious that the man has been deceased for an extended period of time. When she first saw his naked grin, she let out a small, startled yelp of surprise." After meeting the dead man for the first time, Myop is taken aback by what she is witnessing—at least until she notices his decaying skull. As mentioned above, the narrator compares the empty expression on that skull's face to a "naked grin" on his or her own face....