Summer: When Everything is Good

This past week, our class read “The Flowers”. This unexpectedly brutal short story presented questions of innocence, race, and violence, all while over half of it was a calm recollection of Myop’s adventurous walk. However, as the last few paragraphs entirely shift the story, it closes with a simple statement: “And the summer was over.” With the way Myop pieced together the death of the tall man slowly, the audience was revealed to the cold reality at the same time as Myop was. Walker tells the story in real time, only following Myop’s immediate actions and not giving background information other than a “sharecropper cabin” as a hint. So, the simple line was perfectly able to summarize how quickly my perspective had changed, symbolizing the sudden death of Myop’s innocence. 

In fact, summer has been used as a symbol in many other works, which B.D. McClay writes about in “Summer, Glorious Summer”. She specifically connects summers and friendships, saying that friendships feel like summer, the way summer is so magical when it’s happening, and can feel everlasting, but is always bound to end. She also states that friendships feel like stuff only from childhood, not to exist for real in adulthood. Overall summer is often perceived as something “too good to be true”. It puts rose-colored lenses on readers, as well as characters, blocking out the harsh reality that will inevitably come. It protects us from the cruelties no one wants to see: in “The Flowers”, it's societal and prejudiced violence. 

Although, at this point, it may seem that summer’s end is a bad sign, indicating that pain, truth, or a more difficult reality was revealed, there is also something comforting about it to me. As the characters are hit with reality, even if the story simply ends there, like in the case of “The Flowers”, you can almost always imply growth or reflection to follow. We can assume that, after Myop’s discovery, although she may have been scarred, she had also become aware of how others around her were living, while realizing her privilege. The ending of “summer” is ultimately necessary in order for Myop, and characters in other stories, to see the world for what it truly is. Only then can you hope that knowledge of reality will incite a desire for change, or simply contribute to their actions and perspectives of the future.