Freedom And Innocence In The Flowers By Alice Walker

Gerard De Nerval once said, “Every flower is a blossoming soul in nature.” “The Flowers” is a short story by Alice Walker. The main character's name is Myop, she is a ten year old African American girl. Myop seems to live a happy life as she is described as skipping and singing around her family's property. Towards the end of the story Myop discovers something that will change her life. She is no longer the bright ten year old. She has grown up and her outlook on life has drastically changed. Myop begins her morning venturing around her family's property picking flowers and wandering through what seemed to be endless land. She continues into the afternoon and she soon finds herself in a dark place. Myop becomes startled when she steps into the skull of a decaying man. In addition, Myop finds a piece of rope hanging from a tree nearby. It can be inferred that this black man had been lynched. At the end of the story, Myop lays her flowers down, “And the summer was over” (para. 9). The conflict of the story is between Myop`s freedom and innocence and the lynching of the dead man Myop discovers. “The Flowers” is written through a historical lens, which is shown by the symbolic meaning of the flowers.

Myop was a young black girl, and when she came across the man, she stepped into history. Alice Walker wants the audience to realize what had to happen to build the foundations of their lives now that their own people had to die for them to gain freedom in the United States. When Walker shows Myop “Turning her back on the rusty boards of her sharecropper's cabin” (para. 3), she is suggesting that Myop, and the audience, black people, have turned their back to on history. This shows who the intended audience is because Walker does not want the African Americans to turn their backs on history, but to step into