Reading Response: The Flowers and Superman and Me

For this assignment, I was to read two pieces; The Flowers by Alice Walker, and Superman and Me by Sherman Alexie. Both poems were drastically different, and each has its merits, but I preferred to read The Flowers. I have always been a fan of symbolism and allegories, so choosing this work was pretty obvious for me. While I did find Superman and Me charming and inspiring, I found it to be a tad cliché. The Flowers is a work I’ve never read before, and it gave me a very good opportunity to explore the author’s hidden meanings in the story.

As stated before, I very much enjoy symbolism and allegories, which would explain my love for Chris Nolan movies and Avatar: The Last Airbender. The way that people choose to represent the different aspects of a story often tells a lot about them and what they are going through. In The Flowers, Myop is a ten year-old girl who wanders into the woods to pick flowers and venture out to see nature. She ends up a mile or so away from home, and decides to turn back. On her way back, though, she discovers a dead body, which presumably belongs to a man who hanged himself. As she looks around, she notices the parts of the noose the man used amongst a pink rose. In the end, Myop put down her flowers, and it is stated that “the summer was over.”

Symbolism like this is extremely miraculous and charming to me. One of the more obvious clues is Myop’s name, which is likely short for “myopic.” Being myopic is essentially being near-sighted. Myop is a young and innocent ten year-old who is more than likely ignorant to the dangers and struggles in the world around her. The flowers represent her innocence, and when she puts them down after seeing the body, it’s symbolic of her losing her innocence. Myop’s distance from her house could represent the distance of this from anything else she has felt before. It would be extremely hard for someone to convince me that reading this and figuring that out isn’t enjoyable.

Do I like to read literature? Well, that depends on how you define literature. Many people (including myself) imagine boring, old, and complex stories when we hear the word. Last semester, in my Greek Civilization class, we read a few pieces of Greek literature. I did not enjoy those due to their intricacy and odd choice of wording. I do, however, enjoy stories and the occasional poem. I like reading about heroes and sacrifice, and literature has a ton of stories involving those. Literature is so much more than what many of us consider it to be. I think it’s impossible for one to not enjoy literature; one just has to find the kind of literature they like.