#3 "The Flowers" Essay and Reflection

"An armful of strange blue flowers." A unique way to mourn a stranger. Alice Walker tells a tale of Myop and those blue flowers in her short story, "The Flowers." Using imagery and symbolism, Walker emphasizes a contrasting strategy in the story to convey the meaning of "the flowers" and unveil an ending with a twist.

With purposefully developed imagery, Walker is able to show by the flowers play a significant role in the story. By contrasting the "strange" flowers to the "various common" things Myop finds in her outings, Walker establishes early on that he flowers are our of the ordinary: After finding the deteriorating corpse of a tall man, "gloomy" compared to the "golden surprise" and excitement her days usually bring, Myop "laid down the flowers."

 This act instigates a dramatic shift in the story, ending with one short sentence, "And the Summer was over." This syntax choice was made by Walker to create that drama and demonstrate the significance of the flowers. Summer normally indicates a season of fun, especially for a ten-year old. In fact, "the days had never been as beautiful as these," in the beginning of the story shows this contrast.

After her morbid discovery, however, Myop was faced with death -- a concept uncommon for most people her age. Although Myop wasn't scared to see the body per se (the diction choices such as "unafraid," "yelp of surprise," and "gazed...with interest" indicate that her curiosity overpowered any fear), the experience was a life changing one. Walker's symbolic flowers and ending of summer represents Myop's sudden loss of youthful innocence.

Reflection:

“I’m a little rusty.”

My feelings after taking a practice essay for the AP Lit exam. Although we practiced analysis quite frequently in AP Language and Composition last year, coming back to essay writing was not smooth sailing. My experience last year, has given me knack of approaching a prompt the correct way, ‘working the prompt,’ if you will. I consider this a strength because knowing what the question is asking is the first step in tackling the essay. Another strength of mine, I believe is in the introduction of the essay. In this case, I started out with a direct quote to begin my analysis: “’An armful of strange blue flowers.’ A unique way to mourn a stranger.” After the quotation, I wrote a short sentence to sum up my response to the prompt, saying “unique” showed that I understood that the flowers were significant and “mourn” showed that I understood their purpose in the story. Although it’s not a very deep or complex thought, I think that introduction was a quick way to hook the reader in and get my point across. Later in the essay, of course, I go more in depth with my analysis.

Despite these strengths, my weaknesses lie in addressing complexity. I was almost caught off guard by the time restraint, and realized at the end that I hadn’t written very much (my large, sloppy handwriting is also actually pretty misleading). Even though I talked about the contrasts in the story and explained the loss of innocence in the story, I didn’t go as much in depth as I could have. This lack of development encourages generalizations and discourages sophistication in thought and language. Sophistication in language, I think, is another weakness I have when it comes to timed writing, when I have even less time and even more pressure to make the right diction or syntax choice.

After thoughtful reflection, I have come up with three goals to accomplish before the AP test.

Firstly, I want to identify and analyze complexity better. Becoming a more complex thinker is a general goal I have for this class, and I think that ties in well when it comes to analyzing prose for the AP exam.

Next, even though I’m able to identify similes and imagery, I’m not sure I explain ‘how’ they convey the meaning. I want to recognize the purpose of certain rhetorical strategies and devices employed by authors.

Lastly, I want to include a lot more detail in my writing, which I think will improve as I practice taking more of these tests. As I get used to the pacing, I’ll get accustomed to thinking faster and conveying my analysis with sophistication.