"The Flowers" by Alice Walker and “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid Analysis

First and foremost I would like to say that the Alice Walker poem is one of my favorite kinds, a death of innocence poem. I really want to focus on the line that really grabbed me "And the summer was over." The very last line after Myop the girl in the poem finds a dead and rotting body by stepping in it. The whole poem up until she finds the body is quite innocent and happy it describes scenes where she is picking wildflowers and watching animals play, then she finds the body and kind of describes it in the same way she has described everything so far, very observantly and with a child like innocence realizing that the buttons have turned green, and the blue overalls, his naked white smile. I think at this point she didn't really realize what had happened, it was only when she picked the wild pink rose from the center of the remnants of the noose did she realize, that not only was this man dead but everyone will die someday including her. Then her childhood was over, her innocence left, the end of the summer wasn't a literal end of the summer it meant that she died a little inside cause she realized that the world wasn't what she thought it was. The death of innocence, no one ever goes back to how they were before and it is sad to lose the person that was before. In essence Myop died that day and was gone forever.

"Girl" by Jamaica Kincaid focuses more on the overbearing parent, the one that tells you you are nothing and will never be anything because they want you to become better than they were but they really don't think you can. The person that the story is trying to help gets all of three sentences in, throughout the whole story and the first two times she speaks she is ignored, and the parent keeps going on their rant. The narrator of the story thinks that what they are saying is important and will help their daughter, but in reality they are just giving their child that many more reasons to fail, because the girl will ultimately fail no matter what she does according to the narrator. "this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming", "so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming", "this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up". It's almost sad, in trying to help her child the narrator almost creates a self fulfilling prophecy that destines her daughter for nothing but failure. In the very end when the narrator finally does pay attention to her daughter all she does is chastise her. "you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?" The narrator has already predetermined that her daughter will be a failure.