ipl-logo

Coming Of Age In Alice Walker's The Flowers

694 Words3 Pages

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

Show More
Related
183 Words | 1 Pages

Coming of age is an event that everyone must go through. There are many different types of coming of age events that can happen at many different times. Many different stories illustrate the process of coming of age. Through our studies of different texts we have learned that there is no wrong way to come of age. In “Marigolds” the main character Elizabeth Collier came of age by destructing something someone cared about.

Read More
954 Words | 4 Pages

She uses personal stories (pathos) well to pull on readers’ heart strings, as well as using word choice to portray a fearful mood. The first thing the author talks about in this essay is the conflict of whether or

Read More
886 Words | 4 Pages

Rather than remembering the circumstances ofaround the tragedy, she isolates the woman’s death. She does notn’t honor the woman's memory, but rather makes her death seem pointless. By holding onto that evocation, she reframes it, creating her own dark and nightmarish

Read More
608 Words | 3 Pages

Thorn bushes and barbed-wire fences, log bridges and hills are major barriers for her. The cornfield she must cross from her initial path to a wagon road is a maze, haunted to her nearsightedness by a ghost that turns out to be a scarecrow. She must also struggle against her tendency to slip into a dream and forget her task, as when she stops for a rest and dreams of a boy offering her a piece of cake. Despite the difficulty of her trip, she clearly enjoys her adventure. She talks happily to the landscape, warning the small animals to stay safely out of her way and showing patience with the thorn bush, which behaves naturally in catching her dress.

Read More
135 Words | 1 Pages

Having lost her mother in birth and with her whole life encircled by death, Vada Sultenfuss, the gloomy 11-year-old daughter of Harry Sultenfuss, the town’s funeral parlour manager, is no wonder that death became almost an obsession to her. In addition, Vada has no friends in school, she is a hypochondriac tomboy, her grandmother has Alzheimer 's, and worst of all, her best friend is Thomas J. Sennett, another unpopular kid who is allergic to just about everything. During the summer break in 1972, Vada will have her first crush, she will join a poetry writing class, but most of all, when the cheerful and quirky Shelly DeVoto takes up the position of make-up artist at Harry’s mortuary, she will gradually find the maternal figure she always needed.

Read More
503 Words | 3 Pages

Eugenia W. Collier’s short story ‘Marigolds' explores the theme of coming of age through the protagonist Lizabeth as she undergoes an inevitable journey, moving from the innocence of childhood to the emotional complexities of adulthood. This transition in her character is marked by a pivotal moment in her story that brings out a deeper understanding of herself and the world around her. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in a shanty impoverished community, we see Lizabeth’s story unfold, highlighting the emotional complexities of growing up amid hardship and revealing how intense emotional experiences often mark the transition from innocence to maturity. In this personal response, I will discuss how Lizabeth’s actions and emotional

Read More
670 Words | 3 Pages

However, she dies with “her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling” as she has redeemed herself of her selfishness and lack of integrity (O’Connor 430). O’Connor’s use of situational irony in the shocking ending shows the Grandmother’s reclaim of childlike innocence and joy through her fatal brush with

Read More
422 Words | 2 Pages

And the Summer was Over Summer is a universal symbol with as positive connotation filled with happiness and warm, long nights. When the temperature drops and jackets get pulled from the back of your closet, winter is approaching. Winter can be a time of snow mans and hot chocolate or a period of sadness, mystery, guilt, and regret. Alice Walker’s last sentence of her beautiful story, “The Flowers,” states, “And the summer was over,” which is a symbolic explanation that after every happy moment of euphoria comes a time of sadness and sorrow.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

Alice Walker the author of the Flowers”, was inspired to write this story because of the tragedy that has happened to multiple black Americans and how it has affected their human rights. This story describes scenery that may have happened around South America starting off with a girl named Myop, a ten-year old girl who explores the world around her, unaware of the secrets the world beyond holds. In the first paragraph, Alice Walker clearly emphasises Myops purity and young innocence with the quote “She skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen.” This demonstrates how happy Myop is in this setting, we can identify she feels safe here, “ She felt light and good in the warm sun.”

Read More
940 Words | 4 Pages

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” demonstrates the personal growth of the dynamic protagonist Louise Mallard, after hearing news of her husband’s death. The third-person narrator telling the story uses deep insight into Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts and emotions as she sorts through her feelings after her sister informs her of her husband’s death. During a Character analysis of Louise Mallard, a reader will understand that the delicate Mrs. Mallard transforms her grief into excitement over her newly discovered freedom that leads to her death. As Mrs. Mallard sorts through her grief she realizes the importance of this freedom and the strength that she will be able to do it alone.

Read More
455 Words | 2 Pages

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.     At the beguining of the story the author makes use of proper and necessary diction to create a euphoric and blissful aura. The character Myop “skipped lightly” while walker describes the harvests and how is causes “excited little tremors to run up her jaws.”. This is an introduction of the childlike innocence present in the main character.

Read More
524 Words | 3 Pages

The imagery had much light and childishness to it. With images such as “it seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from her house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these”. As well as having lines such as “she felt light and good in the warm sun”, and “She struck out at random at chickens she liked” to create the feeling of child hood innocence, using all of this light to mean goodness and being unaffected by the harshness of reality. However she also uses the imagery later to show the loss of innocence when she describes everything as darker, when she starts using lines such as “it seemed gloomy in the little clove she found herself in” and “all his cloths had rotted away”. Alice walker is using this imagery to convey that the innocence has been lost at this point, taken by the harshness of reality and death.

Read More
808 Words | 4 Pages

Disclosing a disability to an employer can have both negative and positive effects. The possible positive effects being that accommodations can be implemented for the person’s disability, people in the area are aware in case of an emergency, and there is an honest relationship built at the beginning of the job. Negative aspects of disclosing the information could be that people might treat the person differently, expectations of work might be changed, they could receive pity, or it could put the employer in an uncomfortable position. However, if the information is delivered correctly and the employer is considerate, the positive should outweigh the negative. This decision is a personal choice and should be made with many different considerations

Read More
144 Words | 1 Pages

With marijuana being as popular as it is, it has more than enough names that it goes by and that is shocking to me. Marijuana is also known by Ganja which is the term that Jamaica people use. Chronic: which is marijuana mixed with crack? Ditch Weed: This is inferior quality of marijuana.

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

From her internal thoughts and observations, the reader is given knowledge of the exact extent to which Ellie’s own mortality affects her thoughts, actions, and enjoyment of her whole life. The impact of the knowledge is best demonstrated when the reader is told, “Yet

Read More

More about Coming Of Age In Alice Walker's The Flowers

Related Topics

Open Document