"The Flowers" and "Girl" Blog

The short story "Flowers" by Alice Walker seemed at first glance to be a tale of the joyous wanderings of a young girl named Myop. I was stunned when it took such a devastating turn, and Myop discovered a decaying body in the woods. I have actually read Alice Walker before in one of my high school English courses and recall that she is an African American writer. It seems that Myop belongs to a family of sharecroppers, "Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family's sharecropper cabin." Because Alice Walker often writes of African Americans, I assumed that Myop was an African American whose family is bound to sharecropping as a means to support themselves. The majority of the poem speaks of Myop happily talking a walk and admiring the beauty of her surroundings. On a whim she decides to take a new path instead of keeping to the path she normally takes. When she finally decides to turn back, she immediately senses a change in her surroundings. "But the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence close and deep." It is at this point in the poem that I noticed a drastic shift in tone. The carefree tone quickly changed to a gloomy one. Myop then discovers the body of a man. The describe the man wearing overalls which automatically made me assume the man was a worker, possibly a sharecropper. It makes me wonder if this could have been a racial crime. They describe the remains of a noose which makes me believe he was hung, or hung himself. The poem ends with the line, "And the summer was over." Perhaps Walker was referring to the not only the end of a season, but the end of Myop's childhood and the loss of her innocence.

VOCABULARY:
Myop: Possibly short for myopathy meaning "nearsightedness

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid is composed of a mother's harsh instructions to her daughter regarding cooking, cleaning, love, and how to behave in certain social situations. Because the name of the story is "Girl" and not woman, I assume that the mother is talking to an adolescent. "Girl" is also a rather vague and impersonal description, as opposed to something like daughter. The mother is very stern and detailed in her instructions to the daughter. She obviously feels as if she cannot handle much on her own or without any guidance. The mother is also very judgmental of her daughter, often referring to her as a slut. "...on Sundays try to act like the lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming." I also noticed that many of the mothers instructions revolve around the men in the society. The poem must take place in a time when gender roles were predominate in society. "...this is how you behave in the presence of a man..." Obviously women were portrayed as subordinate to men. Almost the entire poem consists of these directions and accusations the mother imposes on the daughter.

VOCABULARY:
barehead: having your head uncovered
fritter: a piece of fruit