In this very short story, Alice Walker tells of a young, African American girl who, while gathering flowers, stumbles quite literally upon the body of a dead man. The atmosphere, language and subject matter of the story suggest the southern United States as a setting-sometime in the mid- to late-20th century seems an appropriate time period, though this is far less clear.
The contrast between the story’s beginning and end is striking. We begin with a light-hearted description of the life of Myop, a young girl-she skips along and taps her stick, enjoying the summer-but end with the loss of her innocence. Indeed, the key image of the story comes at its climax: Myop, picking a pink rose for her bundle of flowers, notices the noose with which the dead man was hanged, realises how his death relates to her heritage, and lays down her flowers out of respect.
The first three paragraphs are devoted to setting the scene-describing Myop (“…her dark brown hand…”) and putting her in context (“…her family’s sharecropper cabin…”, “…the spring, where her family got drinking water…”). Effective description provides credibility to the environment, and makes the later events all the more shocking: “Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water rose and slid away down the stream.
The end the third paragraph sees Myop collect “an armful of strange blue flowers…” These flowers go on to become the main object of the story, hence the title, and hold symbolic meaning-the flowers, representing Myop’s innocence, are ultimately lost.
In the fourth paragraph, Walker hints at the events to come with a change of atmosphere: “The air was damp, the silence close and deep.” Compare this to the first paragraph: “The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch.” As Myop becomes increasingly uneasy about the strangeness of her surroundings, the story pivots abruptly: “It was then that she stepped smack into his eyes.” Despite the gradual darkening of tone which precedes it, this turning-point is shocking, for both its brevity and its strange ambiguity: how, exactly, does one step into a pair of eyes?
The sickening explanation is, of course, soon divulged: “…lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose…” What follows shows Myop to be strangely unafraid, hinting at either experience of something similar, or at complete confusion in an alien situation: “It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise.” I am inclined to take the latter view-the mouth is the only thing that Myop can use as a reference point, given the decaying nature of the bones, and she only experiences fear upon realising that she has stepped into a human skull.
Detailed description of the body follows this, which adds context and meaning to the death, leading up to the story’s conclusion. From the “threads of blue denim from his overalls”, we can deduce that the man was a worker, and, although sweeping generalisations must be avoided, his large bones and teeth, combined with his occupation and cause of death, indicate his probable ethnicity-African American, like Myop.
The final paragraph is very poetic in its language, suiting the story’s poignant conclusion. The crucial moment, at which Myop sees the rose, is described with flowing alliteration: “…a raised mound, a ring, around the rose’s root.”, “…blending benignly into the soil.” The penultimate and ultimate sentences are both short and simple, the latter also being foregrounded for increased emphasis. Although the story is very final in its conclusion, questions are left unanswered: who, exactly, are the girl and man depicted, and where? This ambiguity is clearly intentional, allowing the story to be applied to many people and places.
While the reasoning behind any work of literature can never be conclusively deduced by anybody but the author themself, it would appear that Alice Walker wrote The Flowers to highlight both the violently racist past of America’s southern states, and, through the link with Myop, the relationship that all African Americans have to that particular period of history. On a lesser scale, racism is still common in such regions, and Walker, as black woman, would presumably wish to draw attention to this continuing injustice-again, the story’s ambiguous nature allows it to remain relevant.
To conclude, through The Flowers, Walker manages, in only eight paragraphs, to convey an effective and meaningful story, showing the effect that America’s violent history has on its children.
