The Flowers by Alice Walker Close Reading: Annotation and Analysis DIRECTIONS:

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "The Flowers by Alice Walker Close Reading: Annotation and Analysis DIRECTIONS:"

Cathleen Simmons
5 years ago
Views:

1 Name: Period: Date: The Flowers by Alice Walker Close Reading: Annotation and Analysis DIRECTIONS: We spent the last few weeks closely reading various texts to determine meaning and how meaning is created through the use of rhetorical devices. We will continue to do this with this short story, but you will be expected to depend less on the teacher s assistance and more on your own ability. For this assignment, you will work, with the teacher s guidance, in small groups to complete the close reading activities. When you are finished, you will have a close reading assessment that will test your reading comprehension abilities. For the assessment, you may use all of your notes pertaining to The Flowers. ANALYSIS: Provide specific evidence from the text to support all answers. Support may come in the form of written notes and/or annotations. It seemed to Myop as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws. 1. What is the setting of story? Consider the type of (shared) diction used and determine the mood/atmosphere Walker creates in this paragraph. Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. 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. 2. Characterization: Based on Walker s description, what do you KNOW about Myop? What can you INFER about her? Continue to note the type of (shared) diction.

2 Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family s sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream. 3. Look at the paragraph again to gather more information about the setting. Identify possible symbolism pertaining to the tiny white bubbles [that] disrupt the thin black scale of soil... Continue to note the type of (shared) diction. She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. 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. 4. Reread this paragraph and identify possible symbolism pertaining to the snakes (Consider the story of the Garden of Eden.), mother (Make a text-to-text connection to the poem Mother to Son. ), and her own path. 5. Note the imagery at the end of this paragraph. How does it compare or contrast with the imagery from the previous paragraphs? Continue to note the type of (shared) diction used. 2

3 By twelve o clock, her arms laden (overloaded) with sprigs (stems; twigs) of her findings, she was a mile or more from home. She had often been as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts (hangouts). It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence close and deep. 6. Examine the type of (shared) diction used in this paragraph and determine how it compares or contrasts with the diction from previous paragraphs. What is the effect? Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise. He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he d had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overall had turned green. 7. Consider Walker s imagery in this paragraph. What can we INFER (assume) about the tall man based on the type of (shared) diction used in this paragraph? 3

4 Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she d stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose s root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plow line, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled-- barely there but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers. I. 11. Look at the sentence that begins Frayed, rotted Discuss the sentence structure here. What is the effect of the list of adjectives? Moreover, what is the effect of the long dashes? II. 12. Note the possible symbolisms of the raised mound. 13. Myop literally lays down her flowers at the end of this paragraph. Discuss the figurative meaning of the last sentence in this paragraph. And the summer was over. 14. Discuss the effect of Walker s choice in sentence structure. Determine the figurative meaning of this sentence. 4

5 POST READING: 15. Now that you ve finished reading the story a second time, look up the word myopia. How does our character s name enhance the story s meaning? 16. Reexamine the title of the piece. Consider Walker s choice in titling the story The Flowers. What do the flowers in the story symbolize? To answer this question, you must trace all of the references to flowers in the story. 17. Identify a theme that is developed in the story. Remember the theme formula: TOPIC + COMMENTARY = THEME 1. First, consider the topics that are explored in the text: 2. Choose a topic and consider the author s commentary. What is the author saying about this topic? 5

6 6

READI For Literature YES THEY CAN! Na8onal Symposium on Reading for Understanding Alexandria, VA May 18, 2016 Session 2

Reading, Evidence, and Argumentation in Disciplinary Instruction READI For Literature YES THEY CAN! Na8onal Symposium on Reading for Understanding Alexandria, VA May 18, 2016 Session 2 Carol D. Lee, Co-