“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. » (Martin Luther King Jr.). In the symbolic short story “The Flowers”, Alice Walker recounts the experience of a young girl full of spirit and victim of a brutal end. This story was written in the 1900s. Even though the story of Alice Walker is not very well known, it is a very captivating story of the reality we live in. It shows the transition between ignorance and reality for 10-year-old Myop. Although the story “The Flowers” ​​is a fictional story, it projects the reality of life and the blindness and innocence of children in the face of global issues such as racism and sexism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay In order to construct a truly authentic experience for readers, Walker incorporates autobiographical details about his life and racial experiences to reinforce the realistic nature of the text. . Author Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944, a time considered very intolerant in the United States. Everything was separate. There were separate restrooms for whites and people of color, theaters, schools, etc. This was also the era of Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were named after an insulting song about African Americans. Jim Crow laws had been in effect for about 100 years. These laws were designed to marginalize people of color, but people who decided to defy the laws were often victims of brutal attacks and death. Alice Walker attended a segregated school that would be considered inferior by today's standards. Although it was a segregated school, Walker still remembers her wonderful teachers who encouraged her in her pursuit of writing. She was also raised in a way that would be considered old and initially wanted "permission" to become a writer from her mother. His father was a sharecropper and organized the county's first black voters. As his parents were sharecroppers, his family did not have much money. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she was injured because her brother fired a BB gun and hit Walker's right eye. Because her parents did not have enough money and did not have a car, she was unable to get professional medical care and became blind in her right eye. It was after her injury, when scar tissue began to grow above her eye, that she began reading and writing because she became self-conscious about her appearance and even included her eye in his writing, Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self. Not only does “The Flowers” ​​project issues of innocence, race, and gender, but many of his other works do as well. Alice Walker is a famous novelist, poet and essayist. She has won more than five awards for her writing. She is best known for the novel The Color Purple, which tells the story of a young African-American girl named Celie who experiences the struggles of life and abuse. This novel also became a film directed by the famous director Steven Spielberg. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award for fiction. Most of Walker's works, like The Color Purple, are inspired by the life experiences of black women and the difficulties they face in the world. His works depict emotional, physical and spiritual devastation. For example, the abuse that Célie suffers from her father and her husband. She also draws inspiration from her own experiences. Daughter of a sharecropper, she integrates her own experience into her short story “LesFlowers.” She also incorporates history into most of her stories. For example, the skeleton that Myop discovers in the forest during his walk. Later, after graduating from high school, she was offered a scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and became involved in the civil rights movement. In 1963, she was offered another scholarship and transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York where she graduated in 1965. In 1967, she married Melvyn Leventhal while working with the Head Starter program which is a program aimed at educate the poorest children. Walker and Leventhal ended up having a daughter named Rebecca. However, they ended up getting divorced 11 years into their marriage. Although she started a family, Walker remained committed to her writing career and continued to publish revealing works. In "The Flowers" there are two separate and contrasting parts, the first half of the story has an optimistic view of the world, a child's view. . The story begins with a colored girl named Myop hopping around her farm on a summer day that has never been so beautiful. Her home is in a rural area, so she hasn't yet been exposed to racism or sexism compared to if she lived in a big city. She smells the harvest of plants like corn and peanuts and the harvest makes every day exciting for her, waiting to see something different happen on her small farm. She is carrying a stick and enjoying her summer. Nothing exists except his song. No problems of the world, no worries for her to worry about. She can just enjoy nature and stop to smell the roses. The second half of “The Flowers” ​​acquires a pessimistic view of the world, this represents the reality of the world. Myop begins to move away from the familiar surroundings to explore deeper into the woods. While she's outside, she watches for snakes. Myop moving away from home constitutes the conflict of the story. As she walks away, she begins to worry. The setting quickly becomes that of a cemetery, sinister and damp. Just like reality, it's not a sunny, happy place. Although the story “The Flowers” ​​is indeed quite short, even the first part has a complex meaning. The main character's name, Myop, is the Latin word for nearsightedness. This represents innocence, not knowing the problems of the world. She lives in her own version of the Garden of Eden. The farm contains animals and trees, like the Garden of Eden. As the story progresses, Myop walks beside a stream and observes "white bubbles disturbing the thin black scale of the ground." This shows the black society of the past and present, with white people disturbing the peace of the society in which people of color live. How Britain went to Africa to collect slaves for sale, separating families and destroying the lives Africans knew. However, to Myop, it's just bubbles and dirt. As she wanders through this unfamiliar area, she continues to pick her flowers, showing her innocence. The second section represents death and the reality, loss of innocence. Even though Myop “vaguely watches for serpents,” this is a representation that there should be no deceptive serpents in his Garden of Eden. She ends up falling into the eye of a skeleton. Skeletons represent death and horror. But dislodging her foot, she is not afraid. It's a sign of acceptance that there is evil and horror in the world even if she hasn't experienced any yet. Looking around, she sees a raised mound shaped like a large ring and a rope hanging from a branch of a nearby tree, a noose. This man”.