The Flowers Case

The Flowers

Setting is used as a means of revealing mood, idea, or meaning. In most stories the setting is primarily presented as static and flat, used only as a sense of place. Setting can serve a variety of functions. In Alice Walker's case, the use of setting is dynamic, multidimensional, and transformative. In Alice Walker's "The Flowers" the protagonist Myop, a young African American girl, who while frolicking through the woods and collecting flowers one summer day comes across a dead man. Myop lays down the flowers she had collected and the story quickly comes to an end. "The Flowers" is journey of losing one's innocence. The author paints a vivid setting which changes abruptly throughout the course of the story. "The flowers" displays a vividly descript setting used to symbolize and foreshadow the inner journey the protagonist takes throughout the story.

The summer is often seen as a time of freedom and usually viewed with a carefree attitude. At the very start of the story Walker paints a setting that unveils happiness and youthfulness. Walker dedicates the first four paragraphs to build a setting around summer and the lighthearted attitude that comes along with it. Walker writes, "The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise ..."(53). Walker uses the summer to reiterate Myops' naive innocent view of the world, the landscape is used as an objective correlative for the carefree attitude of the summer. The language that Walker presents here shows Myop as an airy, cheerful child skipping enjoying her summer, nothing else matters to Myop, but her innocent summer. It's quite obvious that the summertime in this story is supposed to symbolize the protagonist's innocence and youthfulness.

The flowers in the setting are very colorful and beautiful and are described as, "an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds"(53). Flowers usually give the literary symbol for beauty, growth, and innocence. The significance of these flowers are used to represent Myop, she is gathering the youth and innocence that is familiar to her.

As the protagonist goes off to explore the woods, Walker tells the reader that "she made her own path bouncing...keeping an eye out for snakes" (54). Still in her childish manner, Myop goes down a new path. The author is noting Myop breaking away from what she is used to, independently, though she is still keeping an eye out for danger. This is the first passage where everything isn't so easy going, the setting here allows the reader to be cautious that something might happen.

As the plot moves on, we start to see a shift in scenery. It is not until Myop goes too far into the forest that the setting

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