Analyse af Alice Walkers 'The Flowers'

In every culture you have a ritual that tells you that you are now a grown up or a teenager. In Denmark for example, we confirm our Christian beliefs and in some other cultures you become a grown up when you have your first period as a girl. The girl in the story’s gets a grown up in a lot different way from the examples I wrote.

The story is called “The Flowers” and is written by Alice Walker in third person. Alice walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia. It is very difficult to say when this story takes place, but it could be from 1863 to 1973. I believe the author wanted it to be like that because in that way, the story will always be relevant. My guess is that the little girl lives in a northern state in America and the man who was killed was black. She wants the world to see what the situation did to the children of that time, and she wants to stop the situation to happen.

The setting of the story is rural because there are chickens, a pigpen, a hen house, fences, a spring and a smokehouse. And the young girl Myop’s sharecropper family lives in a cabin with "rusty boards," (P.107 l.11-12) Indicating that they are poor. The surroundings are all well known and familiar to the girl, and she usually sticks to the paths she has always taken with her mother, but today she follows her own road and bounces from side to side. In this first part of the story, the vocabulary is very positive, the sun is warm and the day is beautiful, (p.107 8) but the author also warns you that something isn’t right at the moment. The description of Myop’s dark hand and the white bubbles disrupting the black soil, tells us that there is a great difference between being white and black, it is the authors way of telling us about racism. The peaceful environment also tells us about the girl’s personality and her childhood.