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Coming Of Age In Alice Walker's The Flowers

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In Alice Walker’s short story “The Flowers,” Walker masterfully portrays the coming of age of a young girl named Myop as she goes through a life-changing event that shatters her naive outlook on the world. Her maturity blooms as she comes to terms with the harsh reality of the world, indicating that her summer - her innocence - came to an end. Walker uses dynamic diction, playful imagery, and profound symbolism to reveal the inevitability of growing up by coming to recognize the shocking truth of reality.
Walker begins the story by establishing an ambiance of childhood innocence through the use of jocund diction. She accomplishes this by illustrating how Myop “skipped lightly” to the smokehouse with a “kneeness that made her nose twitch” while she waits with “excited little tremors” for the upcoming harvest season. Walker’s carefully orchestrated …show more content…

When Myop decides to explore the woods, she ”makes her own path.” This marks the beginning of a new chapter in Myop’s life and serves as a metaphor for her leaving her childhood ignorance behind. However, she discovers the corpse of a lynched man who was left to rot by the perpetrators. By “stepping smack into his eyes” Myop is introduced to the injustice that is prevalent in the world she lives in. Upon realizing the gruesome reality of the scene before her, “Myop laid down her flowers” as she would at a funeral. This act exemplifies Myop’s awareness of the realism of death. Myop awakens from her dream-like state of childhood innocence by understanding the grisly truth behind the corrupt society that she has been ignorant of for her entire life. She can no longer return to the days she spent in ignorant bliss frolicking in the fields under the warm sun. By symbolizing that her “summer was over,” the reader can grasp how Myop’s summer perished along with her

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