My thoughts on "The Flowers" and "Girl"

After reading Alice Walker, “The Flowers” I thought “What in the World”! I guess that reading this I can see how brutal things would have been soon after the Civil War. The slaves would have been free but still having to work as share croppers. The story illustrates that racism was still running rampant and that lynching was probably what had happened to this poor man. I think that the second line in the seventh paragraph, “Myop saw that he'd had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken”, shows that possibly the man was abused or beaten before he was hung, giving evidence of a lynching.
From the beginning of the story the little girl is running about very innocently and happy. She is shut out from the world until now. Everything in her life is very happy go lucky. The second and third line of the second paragraph show that, “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.” At only ten years old she was unaware of the brutality that was being shown towards people of her skin color. While wandering away from what was familiar and welcome to find flowers she finds herself in a dark and sinister cove where she has never been. All of the sudden she stumbled upon and steps on the face of a dead black man. I found it interesting that at that point she didn’t throw down her flowers and run. But she actually went and picked another rose. At this point she find the rotted noose around the flower she was about to pick. Now she lays down her flowers because her innocent mind is now come to the reality that this man was murdered and left to rot. She now can never go back to the way she was before and this is symbolized by her laying down her flowers and that the summer is now over, forever.
The poem “Girl” was interesting. I think that it is a narrative between a girl on the verge of becoming a woman and her mother. Most of the poem is the mother speaking to her daughter by giving her words of wisdom that would be passed down from each generation. These commands that her mother is giving to her are meant to keep the daughter from being “the slut you are so bent on becoming” from line seven. I felt that like this was showing that the mother disliked her daughter for some reason, possibly because the daughter was already not heeding these commands and upholding the heritage that she was a part of. Possibly the mother was trying to scare the daughter to make her listen. But I think that the mother was making sure that the daughter had the proper knowledge and tools to become an adult. Therefore the mother is actually showing her love for her daughter in wanting her to succeed in life. I think that everyone can see themselves and their childhood in this poem. I know that my parents tried their best to teach me everything that I would need to know in order to succeed. One thing that stuck out to me is how the mother tries to teach the girl to smile at people she doesn’t really like. I know that my parents taught me to do something like that. To treat others as you would like to be treated. But in contrast to the mother in this poem my parents did it in a much less intimidating way. The mother in this poem is very mean and harsh. But possibly she has to be like that or this could be the way it always has been done throughout the generations. At the end the girl makes the comment that what if the baker will not allow me to touch the bread. And the mother then states that she should not be the type of person who people would disdain. Basically the mother is saying that if you follow everything that I have taught you then you will become well liked and a working member of society. But this is only possible if you obey all these commands. I know from seeing my sister and mother react that sometimes the daughter has a tendency to be rebellious. I can kind of see that in this story also.