The Flower Garden is a story about a woman who has lived in a town for her whole life. A woman named Mrs. MacLane moves in to a cottage that the other woman, whose name is Mrs. Winning, wants. Mrs winning lives with her husband and two kids, along with her mother and father-in-law. Mrs. Winning seems jealous of Mrs. MacLane's garden, as well as her house.
The author, Shirley Jackson, foreshadows the end of the story with the names of the characters. The name Winnings indicates that Mrs. winnings will get what she wants. Mrs. Winning and Mrs. MacLane are friends throughout the majority of the story, but towards the end of the story, Mrs. Winning and Mrs. MacLane become lesser friends and might even dislike each other. The end of the story is somewhat open ended, but you can infer that since Mrs. MacLane's garden was ruined, she will move back to New York and will sell her house. Since Mrs. Winning wanted to live in the cottage and have the magnificent flower garden, therefore, she got what she wanted.
I can prove that Mrs. Winning and Mrs. MacLane weren't friends at the end of the story because the author said about Mrs. Winning, “she wanted desperately to go over and take Mrs. Maclane's hand and ask her to come back and be one of the nice people again.” I can support my inference about the end of the story because Mrs. MacLane said, “Leave it alone Mr. Jones. Leave it for the next people.” she said this about a large branch that fell from a tree during a storm.
Harrison, thank you for this interesting post. You have demonstrated your understanding of the literal elements in the story. Unfortunately, you've missed the major conflict between the two women and the society they live in: racism. I am happy that you identified the significance of the statement, “Leave it alone Mr. Jones. Leave it for the next people.” However, you missed the symbolism associated with it. As we read more stories this year, I encourage you to dig deeper and stretch yourself to identify conflicts, symbols, and connections beyond the text.
ReplyDelete3/5 Mechanical errors and content errors. You need to capitalize the first letter of every sentence,proper nouns, and the first word of every direct quote.