Initiating Event

The Hanging Tree

A flower is a living thing. It grows, it blossoms, and it dies. Myop was a careless little girl living in post civil war southern United States. She encountered a dead man wile picking flowers in the woods. After she finds this man, her life was changed forever. Flowers are a symbol for innocence. In the short story "The Flowers" by Alice Walker, innocence is defined by carelessness, and hatred and learning of such hatred causes the loss of innocence.

Myop is careless to the world around her, and that makes her innocent. Myop's innocence is captured when, "She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the sick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment" (Walker 1). Myop is oblivious to the world around her. She does not care about the world's problems, especially in her era of post-civil war. This makes her innocent because it shows that she has no care for everything outside of her living space. Her only priority is being a child, which goes along with being innocent. "It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these" shows carelessness by depicting Myop as light and skipping around her family's farm (Walker 1). It shows innocence by showing a light tone with diction such as lightly and beautiful. Skipping is also a very childlike activity, which shows her youth and innocence. "She found, in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds brush full of the brown, fragrant buds." shows Myop's innocence by describing that Myop's only priority is collecting ferns and flowers (Walker 1). The author uses imagery to give the reader the sense of what Myop sees and feels in the flowers she found. She is careless to real world responsibilities and thrives in her youth, picking flowers simply for the joy that they bring her. Myop's flowers are a symbol of her innocence because flowers do not care where they grow as long as the conditions are right. Myop's innocence is similar to that because even though her family is not the most fortunate, she still finds the beauty in the natural world.

Innocence was lost when the man Myop found in the woods met his end. The reader knows by the quotation, "It was the rotted remains of a noose" that the man died because he was hung (Walker 2). There are many possibilities of how he met the noose, but all instances trace back to hatred. "All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls," shows that the man could have been a worker (Walker 2). The author's word choice of rotted repeating from previous quotations shows the disgust of the man's death. His role as a worker gives the possibility of lynching. Lynching is hanging a man for an offence without a trial. This shows the possibility that his employer was not happy with his work and killed him because he did not want to deal with him. This shows hatred by killing a man simply because he did not do what his employer wanted. The quotation, "she noticed a raised mound," shows the possibility of suicide (Walker 2). Hanging one's self has always been a common method of suicide throughout history. This man could have been driven to commit such an act by discrimination in the post civil war era of the story. He would have put the noose around his neck and jumped off of the raised mound and killed himself. If someone is driven to suicide, they would experience lots of hate from others, as long as self hatred. Whether the man was hung by another man or himself, he was hated, and that is how he lost his innocence.

Myop loses her innocence by learning of the hatred directed to the hanged man. "It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise," is when Myop first met the hanged man (Walker, 2). This quotation shows that Myop acknowledges the man. The way that the author describes his face shows how death can often reveal unknown parts of someone's life. She yelps not out of fear, but of surprise, showing that she did not expect the man to be there. Myop is now facing something that she had no idea even existed. Her eyes and mind have now been exposed to the hatred that caused this man's death, starting the process of innocence leaving her. "a ring, around the rose's root," shows the symbol of the flower for innocence once again (Walker 2). The flower depicts the loss of innocence by showing the flower, the innocence, with the noose remains, the hatred, surrounding it. The innocence is trapped by the hatred and cannot show its carelessness again. The hatred and evil now surrounding Myop causes her to loose her innocence. The symbol of the flower is also shown in the lines, "Myop laid down her flowers. And the summer was over." (Walker 2). The loss of innocence is now an action. When Myop lays down her flowers, she shows that she lays down her innocence and lets go of it because she knows how the man died. Whatever the man's true means of death were, Myop knows that there was hatred behind it. When the author stated that the summer was over, it shows that Myop's period of endless care and innocent fun could no longer be the way she lives her life.

Myop was an innocent child because of her life that she lived without a care. The hatred of a human being that led to the death of the man Myop found in the woods. She unwillingly discovered the hatred and sadness of the man's death and no longer had the innocence that was so beautiful in her. Innocence is carelessness, and hatred and knowledge of hatred causes the loss of innocence in Alice Walker's short story"The Flowers". As hard as one might try, nobody can give a flower immortality.

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Short Stories Q1 Essay