The tale of Adam and Eve begins similarly to the tale of Myop— a pure girl wanders among the vibrant foliage, “bouncing this way and that way.” Until she encounters a snake, that is. Walker hints that at the end of her story, Myop, like Eve, has her naivety corrupted when she says the child “vaguely keeps an eye out for snakes.” Eve is also tempted by a strange plant, an apple, as is Myop: in this story Walker wrote that she was attracted by “strange blue flowers” uncommon to find on her typical roams. Such parallels to the serpent and apple symbols of the Genesis story induce the reader to sense that the ending of “The Flowers” will contain a similar loss of innocence.
Adept readers can also deduce that Myop’s innocence is a dynamic element of the narrative when Walker develops it with rich characterization. In the opening line Walker introduces her as someone who “skipped.” Despite the dank settings of pigpens and smokehouses, she reveals that Myop still finds “each day a golden surprise.” With this meticulous detailing, the reader can easily conclude the protagonist is a young girl even before Walker states her age in line 7. Walker emphasizes this trait even further when she ends her opening paragraph with the impactful phrase, “nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.” Walker’s fastidiousness describing this facet of Myop’s character alludes to the reader that it is vital to the storyline, that a loss of it would be powerful.
Walker articulates her intent in more subtle ways as well. Right before Myop walks “smack” into the cadaver’s eyes, she is enveloped in the day’s “peacefulness.” “Smack” has a much brasher sound and darker connotation than “peacefulness”, so this sudden bait-and-switch of tone in diction precipitates a sudden bait-and-switch of tone in content, the dramatic cut from pure blossoms to a rotting corpse. Specifically, the introduction of the dead man is preceded by the diction “haunts” in line 21, as the dead are described to “haunt” like ghosts. When one considers the connotations and juxtapositions of Walker’s diction, they can discern that the corruption of death is upon Myop.
Like a snake unraveling from a tree branch, Walker unspools the tainted ending of the story with symbols, characterization, and diction.
In Reflection:
I followed up my first venture with a multiple choice exam with an endeavor to write a prose passage essay. Once again, my former tangles with essay writing in AP Language & Composition aided me, as I was familiar with the time limit and type of prompt. I finished the essay just in time, without the opportunity for proofreading, so I hope to budget my time more wisely on my next encounter with this exercise. I noticed nuances in my content but occasional spelling and grammatical errors that could’ve been easily corrected with an extra minute or two.
While comparing my own writing with the successful essays of “5 Steps to a 5”, I noticed several similarities. My thesis, “With parallels to the Garden of Eden story, characterization of the protagonist as an innocent, and sharp contrasts in diction, Alice Walker leads the reader into the ending of her short story, ‘The Flowers,’” demonstrates my understanding of the prompt, which called for the identification of writing techniques which readied the reader for Walker’s surprise ending. The techniques I named: symbol, diction, and characterization, are apt for the passage and the first two were even listed as examples by the prompt itself. I presented the breadth of the innocence of Myop’s character, citing her outlook on life and her airy, pleasant work song as evidence. This was an underlying theme I thoroughly emphasized in my work. I’m confident that my approach to the text and its techniques was insightful and nuanced; I picked up on subtle “Garden of Eden” themes and the importance of even just one word choice such as “haunts.”
My fear is that I didn’t examine the complexities, specifically the paradoxes, of the story extensively enough. In Student Essay A of “5 Steps to a 5”, there was an emphasis placed upon Myop’s moment of epiphany— when she sees the noose as she picks a rose. It’s a key moment in the text, a climactic transition from Myop’s innocence to worldliness. And I overlooked it. I focused too much on the buildup to that point. I skipped over the peak of the story and its multifaceted subtleties, the unorthodox juxtaposition between a rose, pink and light and childlike, and a noose, macabre and unrelenting. I also omitted the prejudice and racial tension fueling the piece.
Thus, my aims are simple for future essays. I want to zoom in on the major transitions in each passage, dedicating at least a paragraph to the dissection of their complexities. I can gauge my success with this by the scores and commentary I receive on essays in class. I also want rear my head up from the mire of details, being sure to comment at least once on the broader themes of the passage, such as the prejudice in this story. If I allot myself at least two minutes to proofread as well, I can hope to catch careless errors in diction and punctuation and to raise my score for style.
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