A Field Of Beautiful Flowers

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In this (very) short, disturbing, dark story, a little girl named Myop skips around happily in her farm. The story goes into very detailed description and gives the readers a very happy introduction. Myop is described as loving to bask in the warm sun of summer whole nothing else exists except for her, her song, the stick she loves to carry, and the sound that the stick makes. She stumbles upon a field of beautiful flowers; “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.

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” (Paragraph 4) As she continues to explore, she walks into relatively unknown territory and feels a strange, eerie feeling. As she turns around to head back home, she steps on a face; literally steps on a face. Her heel gets stuck and unfazed, she frees herself. The only reaction she has during this encounter is a yelp of surprise when she sees his “naked grin.

” We then learn that this man’s head was decapitated, as in his head was actually detached from his body. This still doesn’t faze Myop; instead she pushes back the leaves and dirt that covers his face. Ignoring the dead and decapitated man laying on the ground, she sees a wild pink rose next to his literally detached head and picks it. Around root of the rose was the rotted remains of a noose, allowing us to come to the conclusion that this man was hung to death.

Here, I will talk about what certain things in this short story were supposed to symbolize, even though I don’t particularly agree. Chapter twelve of “How to Read Literature like a Professor” talks about symbolism used in literature. For example, how “Animal Farm” by George Orwell symbolizes communism. “The Flowers” is supposed to symbolize the end of a child’s innocence, hence the second to last line in the story: “Myop laid down her flowers,” which was supposed to metaphorically resemble her laying down her innocence and happy outlook towards the world as well. Chapter nineteen of Foster’s book goes into depth of how geography affects the whole atmosphere of the book. You can clearly see that take place in “The Flowers.” The geography/location of the story starts off happily: flowers blooming, animals on the farm making noise, the sun shining brightly. It’s a complete contrast of how the story ends, which is almost amazing when you see how short the story really is. When she steps into the little cove, the aura of the surrounding is described as gloomy, which is done to let the readers know that something bad is about to happen.

Reading different people write about this short story, they all talk about Myop laying down her flowers at the end to be a symbol of her laying down her innocence due to her being exposed to the fact that the world isn’t as perfect as she thinks. While it may be true that this was the author’s intention with writing that, I’d have to disagree with the reasoning. She stepped on a dead man’s face and the only thing she did was pull her heel out from the place between its eyebrow and nose. She wasn’t even scared by his grin, only surprise. She also unabashedly pushes back the leaves and earth covering his face and observes his face and clothes. The entire time, she remain relatively unfazed. In fact, her attention is even easily drawn to a flower growing next to a decapitated head. She picks the rose and adds it to her flower bundle, remaining unfazed, meaning she hasn’t lost her innocence and still doesn’t understand what happened. If her innocence was really gone, she would have had more of a reaction the second she saw the dead man’s body and his detached head. Some may argue that seeing the rotten noose is what changed her perspective on life, but I honestly cannot see what difference the noose makes. The man is still dead and decapitated. It really doesn’t affect the event of things.