Ideas and themes in 'The Flowers' By Alice Walker

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The Flowers By Alice Walker

Written in the 1970’s The Flowers is set in the deep south of America and is about Myop, a small 10-year old African American girl who explores the grounds in which she lives. Walker explores how Myop reacts in different situations. She writes from a third person perspective of Myop’s exploration.

In the first two paragraph Walker clearly emphasises Myop’s purity and young innocence. “She skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen”. This shows how happy Myop is in this setting, we know she feels safe here, “She felt light and good in the warm sun” Her innocence produces an excitement to the reader as it gives the character and the text somewhere to go. We learn that Myop is ten and is African American, however Walker does not present the reader with clear facts but instead reveals it to us. “ The stick clutched in her dark brown hand”, from the information given she allows the reader to form a visual image of Myop. Walker also highlights the setting around Myop, playing on the character’s senses. “The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash made each day and golden surprise”. By doing this Walker reveals more about Myop’s background. We can see from the crops used “cotton and squash” that her family are obviously farmers. We can also see how Myop’s senses are important to her and her reactions to the crops around her show off her child-like qualities. “A golden surprise that caused excited little tremors run up her jaws”. The smells in the air triggered Myop’s other senses and we can see that she is quite aware of these familiar surroundings.

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 Walker then begins reveals more about Myop’s background, “ The rusty boards of her family’s sharecropper cabin”. Here we find out that Myop’s family are working on a sharecropper farm, where they do own the land.  We also know that they are probably quite poor, as this wasn’t uncommon at this time. Walker begins to introduce naturalistic images into the text, “ Around the spring, silver ferns and wild flowers grew” These images create a calming effect on the passage. Walker also introduces a racial reference in to the text. “They tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of ...

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