Racism in Alice Walker's the Flowers
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- Date Submitted: 10/26/2014 08:42 PM
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Racism in Alice Walker’s “The Flowers”
There many universal messages in Alice Walker’s story, but the biggest one we can see is Racism. Racism has been a part of the world ever since mankind has existed, but this little girl experiences it for the first time when she comes upon the corpse of a hanged black male. Lynching was a common thing during the 1800’s; this was done to punish black people, who would get lynched for even looking at a white person the wrong way. But instead of being afraid like many others would do, we can see her maturity as the author writes “Myop lays down her flowers”. She can see how brutal lynching’s can be as the author writes that the corpse had “large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken” which might show that he might have been beaten before his murder. Alice Walker also shows the destruction of Myop’s childhood. This story shows how dramatic and how prominent was in the South during Segregation, showing us that black people were not treated fairly, between 1882- 1962, over 4000 lynchings had taken place
The young black man was probably lynched for something small or petty; or maybe nothing at all. This show how poorly treated African Americans were treated; there was no equal justice for them. Lynching is the practice whereby a mob--usually several dozen or several hundred persons--takes the law into its own hands in order to injure and kill a person accused of some wrongdoing. The alleged offense can range from a serious crime like theft or murder to a mere violation of local customs and sensibilities. But what we can tell from history, is that African American people were lynched for even flirting with a white person, an example of this, is Emmet Till who was murdered at the age of 14 for rapidly flirting with a woman. Of course
we don’t know if the lynched man in the story is actually guilty, but from what we can assume is that the lynched man probably did not deserve it. He had been...
There many universal messages in Alice Walker’s story, but the biggest one we can see is Racism. Racism has been a part of the world ever since mankind has existed, but this little girl experiences it for the first time when she comes upon the corpse of a hanged black male. Lynching was a common thing during the 1800’s; this was done to punish black people, who would get lynched for even looking at a white person the wrong way. But instead of being afraid like many others would do, we can see her maturity as the author writes “Myop lays down her flowers”. She can see how brutal lynching’s can be as the author writes that the corpse had “large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken” which might show that he might have been beaten before his murder. Alice Walker also shows the destruction of Myop’s childhood. This story shows how dramatic and how prominent was in the South during Segregation, showing us that black people were not treated fairly, between 1882- 1962, over 4000 lynchings had taken place
The young black man was probably lynched for something small or petty; or maybe nothing at all. This show how poorly treated African Americans were treated; there was no equal justice for them. Lynching is the practice whereby a mob--usually several dozen or several hundred persons--takes the law into its own hands in order to injure and kill a person accused of some wrongdoing. The alleged offense can range from a serious crime like theft or murder to a mere violation of local customs and sensibilities. But what we can tell from history, is that African American people were lynched for even flirting with a white person, an example of this, is Emmet Till who was murdered at the age of 14 for rapidly flirting with a woman. Of course
we don’t know if the lynched man in the story is actually guilty, but from what we can assume is that the lynched man probably did not deserve it. He had been...