The Flowers

Explore the evolution of color as each one is named in this short story—from the “golden surprise” of the summer harvest to the “bleached” fray of the noose. How do these colors underscore Myop’s relationship to her surroundings and the reciprocal effect that her surroundings have on her?

In her poetry, Emily Dickinson used the word noon to mean more than “the middle of the day” or “the time of day when a main meal is eaten.” She also used the word to symbolic effect to mean, at times, “the highest point of life” or “the culmination of something,” according to the Emily Dickinson Archive. Consider the time of day in Alice Walker’s “The Flowers.” How might you define the symbolic potential of twelve o’clock in context?

This story was included in the collection In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women. Consider, in contrast, that Myop is only 10 years old. In what ways is her encounter with the hanged man foundational to her becoming a Black woman? What lessons about love and trouble might she take with her into her Black womanhood?