Foreshadowing In The Flowers By Alice Walker

In The Flowers by Alice Walker, the author uses the protagonist’s journey from innocence to awareness to suggest how the gruesome events of the real world strip one of their purity and reveal them to harsh realities. Walker employs early foreshadowing to create ironic lines that contrast the story’s dark conclusion and uses strong symbolism and diction to convey real-world events. The story is set in spring and Myop is portrayed as a joyous character with all the childlike innocence in the world. She believes “each day a golden surprise” (Walker 1), which is later proven to be ironic after her encounter with the corpse. The juxtaposition of the perfect, flawless life and the cynical ending represents how different one’s life becomes after facing

You assume every day will be as wonderful as the last until you encounter reality checks, such as the corpse. In the middle of Myop’s blissful being, it is evident how she makes an effort to ignore the truth as more and more matters arise. Further down the story, Walker uses rust as a critical symbol in the story. Myop “[turns] her back on the rusty boards of her family’s sharecropper cabin” (1). The rust on the cabin’s walls symbolizes the gradual shift to consciousness over time. Rust is often associated with the decay or abandonment of an object, displaying Myop’s naivety “rotting” away her life. Furthermore, rust also creates a permanent indentation on the object it’s affecting, showing how this process is permanent and “eating away” at Myop. This change cannot be reversed. Once it has started, it is already too late. Advancing through the story, Myop’s whole world transforms when she encounters a skeleton in the woods. This skeleton is a crucial turning point for her. It embodies the harsh truths about the world and how society changes. When Myop sees this body, she is not scared. The author uses dictions such as “surprise”, “interest”, and “gaze”, but never scared or horrified