Innocence versus the disturbing and horrifying truth of reality. Sadly innocence loses. After reading 'The Flowers' by Alice Walker and 'Dirge For a Saturday Night' Kathleen Sutton the reader gets a taste of the macabre tone of Racism. Although, the poem 'Dirge For a Saturday Night' was a disturbing piece of art it cant compare to short story, 'The Flowers'. The short story has such a emotional appeal to all age groups, its easy to comprehend,and the diction and tone are so well written that you can feel yourself in the story visualizing these things.
First off, for a article of writing to have a macabre tone it has to be disturbing and horrifying because of involvement with or depiction of death and injury. I agree that the poem does express these things; However, the diction they use to express the dark depiction of death and injury is not as striking compared to the amount of figurative language in the short story. for example the short story says 'an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds. This diction shows the flowers as beautiful and peaceful but also strange. The section this is found in shows a shift from the usual flowers and the familiarity of the flowers she saw before to the new unique flowers she is experancing for the first time. The allegory of this is the idea of gaining new knowledge. The knowledge is a key factor to the loss of innocence of the child surrounding the story. Her losing her innocent view on the world as a black child in a racist world can cause the story to be disturbing. The author of this story connects the most crude punishment to a black being,lynching, to the innocence and beauty of a rose. The connection is so disturbing and sinister and the fact a young black girl experiences the hate of the world and the murder of her people but is lead to this by the exicitement of pureness and beauty is a horrifying sicking depiction of death.
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Furthermore, poems can be very opinionated as in interpatation. Poems are great to show ones inner thought process and reasoning skills; consequentially, this can lead to Macabre tone to not show as easily in this form of literature. For example, in the poem it says ''cord around the throat''. Some would view this as talking about suicide ,but on the other hand some see this as lynching a form of punishment that led to death for African Americans. to view this one way over the other can cause the view of the entire main idea to changes. So the best effective way to portray this would have to be through the short story. for an example the short story says ' 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'' it is easy to infer that the girl is happy;to infer that the girl is anything but happy would be hard to find something to support that claim due to the diction and how easy it is to interpate the writing.
Everyone can relate to the short story. This is easy to be proved because everyone was once innocent. In a non spirtual way everyone once was pure. Everyone had that one thing that changed there innocence. As a new being in the world you have no clue how hateful and sick people can be due to lack of knowledge. a virgin is no longer pure once they have sexual interactions with another. A human is no longer pure once they experience injustice or emotional pain or a act of hate. in the short story it says ''Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled--barely there--but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers.'' this quote shows the little girl laying down her innocence and letting herself become knowledgeable. Once she has seen the horrid death of her people due to hate and power abuse she drops all of those pure beautiful innocent flowers and allows her self to enter reality. People lose their blinders from perfection to flaws. People learn about things and the more people learn the more they escape from the world of good to the world of damage.
In conclusion, after reading both the poem and the short story, the short story is the most showing of the macabre tone. It is relateable to everyone, there is clear interpertation, and the diction used is very beneficial to show the macabre mood of the story. The story's sense of lost innocence and racism and how it involves murder and death but yet also beauty and pureness is a perfect effective way to get the tone across
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