The Flower Garden is a short story about how a person can have a certain place in society, and then after a short amount of time, they have a completely different position.
The story to me is mainly dealing with the idea of conflict because of opinion and bias. Mrs.MacLane is given the situation of person-against-society. In the beginning of the story, Mrs.MacLane was well known, and had a reputation as a good lady. She had created friendly neighbors, and even a best friend, Mrs.Winning. Mrs.Winning and Mrs.MacLane shared the passion and love for gardening. They both appreciated the gifts that flowers brought to a home, as well as the feeling of warmth they created. When Mrs.MacLane began growing her garden, she found that she was in need of a helper to assist her with the gardening. Tension began to rise in the story when Mrs.MacLane was nice enough to give a colored man the job as her assist. The community created a sort of “stereotype” against this man and his family. It was utterly frowned upon that Mrs.MacLane would let this man and his child into her house, let alone without a shirt on. It became perfectly clear to Mrs.MacLane that she was suddenly blocked out from the rest of society. . “That’s wrong, Mrs.Winning was thinking, you musnt’t ever talk about whether people like you, that’s bad taste.” Neighbors weren’t so friendly anymore, and even Mrs.Winning became un-excited about the colored man being around so often.
In conclusion, the story shows that often time’s people get caught up in choosing right from wrong. Mrs.MacLane thought it very right of her to invite a man of color into her house. Mrs.Winning disagreed because she was too ignorant to realize that she never had even spoken to this man, so how could she know anything about him and his family (besides possibly false information from the rumors)?
Thanks, Alessandra. You have some interesting insights. Yes, there are stereotypical behaviors that are revealed in the story. In addition to racism, there are stereotypes about women and jealousy and gossip. You hinted a little bit at the sexual tension in the story, however you didn't name it. I wonder if you noticed this element that Shirley Jackson embedded.
ReplyDelete4/5 points. You have some minor technical errors. For example, you worte, "assist" when I think you meant assistant. You also have some structural errors. Don't forget, every paragraph has a topic sentence, supporting ideas and a transisiton/closing sentence.The topic sentence needs to be the focus of the paragraph. You talk about a lot of different ideas and move around a lot in this entry. In your final paraph you introduce some good, but new, ideas. This is the place you should be summarizing your thoughts and pulling the whole essay together. Keep at it! You improve a little bit every time you write.