"The Flowers" by Alice Walker

As I began to read this piece by Alice Walker, I was overcome with a sense of déjà vu.  Growing up in Ruby, South Carolina, Myop's activities paralleled with the after-school adventures my older brother and I would take when we were younger.  We loved playing outside and wandering in the woods near our house.  Just as Myop walked to the stream, we always found ourselves fascinated by the creek that ran between our neighbor's home and ours.


The wording chosen by Walker created an image of serenity.  The woods seemed to be such a peaceful place that welcomed her ten-year-old curiosities. In the last sentence in paragraph three, Walker wrote, "Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream."  I feel that this sentence contained a hidden sense of foreshadowing.  Just as the white bubbles disrupted the thin black scale of soil, Myop's happiness and summer was disrupted by what she stepped on as she began to head home.


The ending came to be a huge surprise to me, as it immediately twisted the mood of tranquility to suspense.  The descriptions of the body rotting away led to the notion that the body had been there a good, long while without anyone missing the person.  This shifted the feelings of being one with nature to being completely alone, which was reinforced by the noose found circling a limb.  Suicide is the ultimate display of loneliness, and Myop realized this as she walked into this horrific discovery.  At ten years old, Myop was not mentally prepared to deal with this, which is represented by her actions thereafter.  She laid down the flowers that she had worked so hard to pick and prepare, and the story ends with the line, "And summer was over."


I found this story to be extremely interesting.  The sentence stating, "It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise," threw a curveball into the situation Myop had gotten in to.  It seems as though the man had finally found his own happiness letting go of life, while Myop had found happiness exploring the life around her.