#78 Flower Children- Maxine Swann
Happy Friday! Here is another Prize Story from the O. Henry
Awards. Flower Children is written with an easy flow of a pastoral
childhood. If only everyone could grow
up like this, happy, free of boundaries, nothing to do but explore and learn.
Of course this utopian view of what existence would be like
without a tether is fraught with problems. What starts out as innocence and joy
eventually turns to cynicism and angst, at least for the parents. Children are adaptable as we see here. They
love the openness of their hippy home, but then they also learn to love the
confines of rules and expectations.
When you raise a child to be sensitive and aware of their
surroundings, guess what? They can see through your façade as well. I liked this story. Swann has a subtle style
and the use of imagery is a nice framework for the underlying emotion. The young
apple trees at the start give way to “gnarled apple trees with puckered gray
skins” as the children’s lives become more real. In the end, the Utopia has
dissipated and is replaced with hope, and that should really be enough.
Notable Passage: “They hold leaves up to the light and peer
through them. They close their eyes and press their faces into showers of
leaves and wait for that feeling of darkness to come and make their whole
bodies stir.”
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