Name: ______________________________ Period: ____ Date: ________________

“The Flowers” by Alice Walker Close Reading: Annotation and Analysis

DIRECTIONS: We spent the first quarter closely reading various texts to determine meaning and how
meaning is created through the use of rhetorical devices. We will continue to do this throughout the course of
the year, but as the year progresses, you will be expected to depend less on the teacher’s assistance and more
on your own ability. For this assignment, you will work in groups of three to complete the close reading
activity. Your group will have two class periods to complete this packet. On Thursday, November 19th, you
will have a close reading assessment with multiple-choice questions that will test reading
comprehension and a short written response that will test your ability to explain how one rhetorical
device is used to develop a theme in the story. For the assessment, you may use all of your notes pertaining
to “The Flowers.”

PRE-READING:
1. Who is Alice Walker? Record all of the information your group researched.

2. This text differs from other texts we have read thus far because it is a short story. Before discussing
the story in your group, you should review the blue Literary Elements packet and discuss the
elements of the short story.

3. Examine the title. What comes to mind when you consider the title?

ANALYSIS:
Provide specific evidence from the text to support all answers. Support may come in the form of
written notes and/or annotation.

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. 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 that caused excited little tremors to run up her
jaws.
1. What is the setting of story? Consider the type of diction used and determine the mood/atmosphere
Walker creates in this paragraph.
Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat
of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing
existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of
accompaniment.
2. Characterization: Based on Walker’s description, what do you KNOW about Myop? What can you
INFER about her? Continue to note the type of diction.

Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family’s sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it
ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns
and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt
the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream.
3. Look at the paragraph again to gather more information about the setting. Identify possible
symbolism pertaining to the “tiny white bubbles [that] disrupt the thin black scale of soil...”
Continue to note the type of diction.

She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to
gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way,
vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. 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 bush full of the brown,
fragrant buds.
4. Reread this paragraph and identify possible symbolism pertaining to the snakes (Consider the story
of the Garden of Eden.), mother (Make a text-to-text connection to the poem “Mother to Son.”), and
“her own path.”

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 5. Note the imagery at the end of this paragraph. How does it compare or contrast with the imagery
from the previous paragraphs? Continue to note the type of diction used.

By twelve o’clock, her arms laden (overloaded) with sprigs (stems; twigs) of her findings, she was a mile or
more from home. She had often been as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as
her usual haunts (hangouts). It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was
damp, the silence close and deep.
6. Examine the type of diction used in this paragraph and determine how it compares or contrasts with
the diction from previous paragraphs. What is the effect?

Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then she stepped
smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached
down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of
surprise. He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When
she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he’d had large white teeth, all of
them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some
threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overall had turned green.
7. Consider Walker’s imagery in this paragraph. What can we INFER (assume) about the “tall man”
based on the type of diction used in this paragraph?

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 Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she’d stepped into the head was a wild pink
rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose’s root. It was
the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plow line, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an
overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled--
barely there—but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers.
I. 11. Look at the sentence that begins “Frayed, rotted…” Discuss the sentence structure here. What is
the effect of the list of adjectives? Moreover, what is the effect of the long dashes?

II. 12. Note the possible symbolisms of the “raised mound.”

13. Myop literally lays down her flowers at the end of this paragraph. Discuss the figurative meaning of
the last sentence in this paragraph.

And the summer was over.

14. Discuss the effect of Walker’s choice in sentence structure. Determine the figurative meaning of this
sentence.

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POST READING:
15. Now that you’ve finished reading the story a second time, look up the word “myopia.” How does
our character’s name enhance the story’s meaning?

16. Reexamine the title of the piece. Consider Walker’s choice in titling the story “The Flowers.” What
do the flowers in the story symbolize? To answer this question, you must trace all of the references
to flowers in the story.

17. Identify a theme that is developed in the story. Remember the theme formula:
TOPIC + COMMENT = THEME