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The Flowers By Alice Walker Symbolism

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The elements of fiction play a huge role in identifying the theme of a story. Whether it’s characters, setting, plot, symbols, or one of the several elements, they all help portray the lesson being taught. Elements of fiction bring purpose and meaning to a story's message. Alice Walker uses setting and symbolism in her short story, “The Flowers,” to express that one’s sense of curiosity can lead to upsetting and life changing encounters. Setting is used by Alice Walker to express that one’s sense of curiosity can lead to upsetting and life changing encounters. The setting of this story takes place in a sharecropper cabin. Sharecropping is a term that means, “giving a part of each crop as rent,” and was often popular during the late 1900’s …show more content…

The symbol used in this story is flowers, as the title states. This symbol represents Myop, the main character's innocence. Myops' innocence and curiosity are shown very early on as she goes further in the woods to increase her flower collection. This shows her curiosity towards flowers and the woods, and her innocence by not knowing what she may come across. Once Myop finds the dead body of a slave, along with a noose, she immediately picks up a pink rose. This shows that she did not understand what a noose was, or that the body was a slave. Alice Walker affirms that, “Very near where she’d stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose’s root” (The Flowers 8). Since Myop was curious about what was further into the woods, she came across a life changing finding. The flowers correspond with the theme because they represent her innocence towards the slave, and avoiding the situation by using flowers. The last few lines of the story state, “Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over” (The Flowers 8). This line means that once she laid down her flowers, her innocence had been lost. This connects to the development of the theme by showing how her curiosity can lead up to her losing her innocence with the flowers as she encounters a dead slave

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The author used symbolism throughout the whole story to show the difference between these characters. The symbolism is there to give us a further explanation on the family and also to tell us how much heritage is important to some, but not others. The first symbol

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