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Loss Of Innocence In The Flowers By Alice Walker

761 Words4 Pages

One of the most common literary devices an author includes in their stories is symbolism. Countless authors take something simple and turn it into an object that holds a deeper meaning. A similar situation can be seen in the short story “The Flowers” by Alice Walker. The story revolves around a young, naive African-American girl named Myop as she encounters all kinds of interactions. These experiences cause her to go through an irreversible understanding of the world she lives in. The author utilizes everyday objects to hint at the process Myop goes through to obtain this newborn consciousness. Throughout the story, Walker uses symbolism to display how the main character slowly loses her innocence. Just like most young children, Myop is blissfully innocent and naive. At the unadulterated age of ten years old, Myop is …show more content…

Myop undergoes this exposure as she delves more into the forest. The author writes that Myop attempts to turn around to go back home when she notices a change, but “[h]er heel became lodged...she reached down quickly, unafraid to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise.” She takes a wrong step and comes across a corpse of a man. At first, Myop disregards it but when she gets a closer look, she realizes that the man had been lynched by reason of racial bias. The body plays a role as it symbolizes everything Myop tried to pay no attention to. The body stands for the racism and death in the world. From this moment, Myop’s innocence completely fades away. As a result of this traumatizing discovery, “Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over.” Her virtue was ruined and she could no longer stay the innocent girl she had originally been. She must drop her flowers and finally realize that the summer will not last forever. The serene summer is coming to an end, just like her

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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A sense of life symbols is created in, “Where the family got drinking water” (…). Myop’s jocund jaunt through the forest is described using flowery imagery and symbolism, “an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of brown, fragrant buds”. The strange blue flowers hold symbolic meaning as it represents Myop’s innocence, and ultimately the loss of innocence. Such an exploration of the confronting nature of discoveries seeks to evoke a sense of empathy and reflection in the audience (this can be a link to the next paragraph) An individual’s perception of the world can be shattered by unexpected provocative discoveries.

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