SHORT STORIES
A conflict in Alice walker’s story is clearly portrayed between the virtue of innocence and experience. Myop who is the main character in the story is seen as innocent and conflict emerges during her childlike wonder and her attitude towards the world and this conflict with her condition of experience that is introduced at the last part of the story at that time when she saw the body of a murdered man and she understands the significance of what she was able to see. At the start of the story Walker explains that Myop is totally unaware of the importance of her skin color and her name happens to be suggestive as it is from the word myopia which basically is a form of blindness. This clearly shows that she is innocent of the social and racial reality that surrounds her existence and the kind of difficulties that her parents go through as they live as sharecroppers (Walker 1). However her innocence is brought to a conclusion when she sees the skeleton of the murdered man who was black. It is at this point that she experiences racism as a reality. Though the occurrence occurred long time ago but yet it resulted to the breaking of her innocence. The last part indicates that “the summer had come to an end which only meant that she was no longer a child but she now knew how the blacks were treated. Her conflict was not solved as there is still the occurrence of racial violence all over the world today this making Myop to have a rationale to dispense the childhood ignorance and innocence.
Bell crickets are beautifully made top singeing insects in the autumn nights and they sing in a loud and clear voice. The insect impresses and hence attracts so many people into searching for it as they feel it is a valuable and ancient treasure. The narrator therefore uses the bell cricket and a grasshopper which is similar to a bell cricket but not as unique as the cricket. He has a symbolic meaning to his choice of insects as it is not based on just a mere curiosity of children to chase after insects but the metaphors are used for a noble purpose.
The symbolic transfer of a bell cricket from the boy and the girl in the bush helps to develop the theme of love and how it is done even using a simple gesture. The author states clearly in the moral lesson part that bell crickets are rare to find as there are not many bell crickets all over the world (Kawabata 3). This is to mean that there are only few people who are so special and important people. The grasshoppers on the other hand represent the normal average people who at times may seem as the true bell crickets. Whereas a true bell cricket, when the mind is clouded and the heart are wounded a person may appear as a grasshopper. In the bush there were many grasshoppers but yet the children were desperate to find a bell cricket meaning that even today most of the people are in search for special people but the world is dominated by average people. The surprise that the children had when they saw it was a grasshopper instead of a bell cricket is similar to how people are surprised after getting what they did not want.
References
Kawabata, Yasunari. Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket. MereDUHth,27th August,2008.
Walker, Jane. Flowers. Gloucester, 1993.
