I would remember a name like Myop. As soon as I started reading "The Flowers" by Alice Walker, I knew I had seen this short story before. The first time coming across this story in my junior year of high school before the teacher led us in an in-depth discussion, our class came to the conclusion that Myop was a blind girl who did not even know what she stumbled upon. Reading further though, we saw a completely different story. Being such a beautiful day, one could have never imagined what she would run into that day. Myop was a little African-American girl who went on an adventure one day walking through the woods behind her house. Not knowing of the dangers that may have once existed in her own backyard, the narrator tells the reader she kept a vague "eye out for snakes" (line 15). The story starts to get darker in the fifth paragraph as the reader finds out Myop has travelled further then she usually does. To describe this Walker states that "the air was damp, the silence close and deep (lines 20-21). As Myop becomes uncomfortable and begins to go home or return to "peacefulness" (line 22) she steps into what used to be someone's face. What Myop has found is the rotting body of a tall, African-American male who was lynched and then hung to die in the woods. Evidence of this lynching is given in line 28 when she sees that all his teeth were "cracked or broken". Even more evidence to the hanging are the "rotted remains of a noose" found on the ground or the "frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled" remains of the noose left hanging from the tree (lines 32-34). In respect for the man's life, Myop placed down her flowers that she had spent all morning collecting. The story ends with this line: "and the summer was over". This line culminates the poem and brings the theme of loss of innocence to the foreground. This just shows how quickly children had to grow up in the civil rights era. Myop had to acknowledge death and learn to accept it at the tender age of ten while playing in her backyard. If that isn't growing up fast, I don't know what is.

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid is simply a mother trying to parent her daughter by telling her how to act like a lady. She is telling her how to do everything from setting tables to "how to make ends meet" (line 30). The mother is consistant with one thing and uses reverse psychology in order to not make her daughter become a "slut" (line 7). As a reader, I thought that if the daughter had anything to say in response to her mother's advice that it would come at the end of one of those lines; instead, the daughter's thoughts, indicated by italicized phrases, only come after the mention of church and the baker's bread. Obviously, the daughter knows that her ways are not loose and brushes her mom's thought of that aside and only reacts to what is important to her. I like this poem. The structure is simple, and it is very easy to comprehend. I believe many girls will eventually hear almost all, if not all, of these life lessons from her mother throughout her teenage years.






0