Flower Garden Assignment
The story Flower Garden by Shirley Jackson is a story that shows the effects that racism has on the people that surround it. The protagonist in this story is Helen Winning. A woman named Mrs. MacLane moves into the town Helen lives in with her son, Davey. They soon become friends after Helen introduces herself and offers help if Mrs. MacLane had needed any, their kids also become friends. After a few weeks Mrs. MacLane meets a boy named Billy Jones, he is half black, and half white. Mrs. MacLane decides that she needs assistance in her garden and offers Billy a job to help her with her garden. Billy accepts but the next day when he is supposed to start his father goes with him and says that he should work and not his son. Mrs. MacLane accepts, and Helen is there and sees everything. Mr. Jones starts working there every day and his son Billy becomes friends with Davey. Soon her garden begins to become beautiful, but when the entire town realizes that she has blacks at her house everyday they don’t approve. They are not friendly to her and they don’t comment on her garden anymore. Mrs. Winning has also begun to stop talking to her and they are no longer close friends like they once were, Helen also doesn’t let her kid play with Davey. The townspeople start to tell Helen that she should say something to Mrs. MacLane about having blacks at her house. As she becomes completely alienated from the rest of the town a tree falls on her garden completely ruining it leaving her unsure of whether or not she will move back to New York.
As I read this story I realized that everything that happens to Mrs. MacLane’s garden shows symbolism. When she first moves into the town everybody is very friendly with her and likes her, her garden is beautiful and has flowers everywhere. When she hires black people to work for her the garden slowly but progressively starts to get worse, her once beautiful and colorful garden starts to lose its color and becomes greyer. As everyone starts to alienate her it continues to get worse. The last straw leaving her garden destroyed is when the tree falls on her garden. I made a prediction when I finished it that she was going to go back to the city. I decided this because when Helen is looking at the garden she does not say anything and does not offer any help, she simply turns her back on Mrs. MacLane. I think that symbolizes that Mrs. MacLane will turn her back on her garden and just go back to the city. I think that the point the author was trying to get across was to be understanding of people, and be open to what they think. I think that was the theme because in the town and time this book is set blacks are lower class citizens and even talking with them is frowned upon. Mrs. MacLane came from a place where blacks were accepted as citizens so her views were much different than those of the townspeople. I think that Shirley Jackson was trying to show that everybody at one point or another comes to be like Mrs. MacLane where they see things differently than most and we all have to learn to be accepting of that.
