The Flower Sisters

“The only difference was the minuscule bluish-purple birthmark at the top of one slender neck. Violet, of course. It was the only sure way our mother had of telling us apart before our hair grew in, dark and long.”

In this scene, “Rose,” who is actually Violet, reflects on the violet-colored birthmark that distinguishes her from her sister. This birthmark is an important symbol in the book, for the physical mark that distinguishes the sisters also symbolizes their differences in character. The quiet, unassuming Rose, who always endeavors to follow her town’s rules and avoid taboo behavior, remains unmarked and unblemished (“pure” in the eyes of the community), while Violet’s birthmark implies that she is also perceived to carry a metaphorical stain on her character.

“I have moved around a lot in my fifteen years: St. Louis, Denver, Houston, Chicago. When I was younger—like in elementary school—I used to write letters to the friends I left behind. I was the pen-pal-iest person ever. But they rarely wrote back and even if they did, it was only once or twice. By the time I was in junior high, I had decided it was easier to stop making friends. What was the point? I knew where things were headed.”

In a defeated, world-weary tone that contradicts her young age, Daisy reflects on the instability of her life with her mother. This passage reflects Daisy’s longing for friends and companionship even as it emphasizes the circumstances that have contributed to her wariness of forging new connections. As Daisy becomes deeply invested in the history of Possum Flats, she learns to put down roots and overcome her protective instinct to remain isolated from others. Her character arc is focused on forming strong, meaningful relationships in Possum Flats to counteract her previously rootless existence.

“We have a civil working relationship, but beyond that, there’s not a lot of love lost between me and the good pastor. He can’t hide his disdain for me. It’s partly that I remind him of his ‘bad old days,’ which he would just as soon everyone forget.”

“Rose” reflects on the uneasy state of affairs between her and Dash. The lack of warmth between the two stands as an oblique reference to Dash’s suppressed shame over the excesses of his youth. Because Daisy’s grandmother serves as a reminder to Dash about his past, and particularly to his doomed relationship with Violet, Dash now keeps his distance from the woman he believes to be Rose. His feelings of disdain for “Rose” are a result of his need to suppress his shame about his past actions toward her sister.

“There is something so sad about living nearly a century and having two such disparate halves to your life. And doing irreparable harm to another in the process. Someone you love.”

As “Rose” prepares the mayor’s body for burial, she reflects on the double life that the man led. Although he maintained a public façade of being a loving husband, he engaged in many affairs on the sly. While this passage is focused on the mayor’s life, it is equally applicable to a number of characters in the book. Dash, for example, lived a vastly different life before the tragedy, and his subsequent transformation into a judgmental, bitter town preacher left no room for his biological daughter to connect with him. Even Violet herself gave up her entire identity and hurt a number of people with her deception, including her husband, George, and her daughter, Lettie.

“That’s what obituaries are, don’t you see? […] These are stories about a life. What could be bigger than that? And in Possum Flats or any other town, small or large, these are the stories that people are anxious to read.”

Daisy is disappointed when she learns that her first assignments at The Picayune will be to write obituaries. However, Myra explains the importance that obituaries hold in a small town such as Possum Flats. Anderson draws on her own life when she includes this detail, given that she once wrote obituaries herself when she worked at her local newspaper for a high school summer internship. Within the novel, the obituaries gain a symbolic significance as well, given that the entire town of Possum Flats is still deeply affected by The Enduring Impact of Past Tragedies. In this context, the record of each person’s life becomes especially important, and both obituaries and Daisy’s retrospective articles become powerful ways to remember and honor those who have died.

“In her presence, a range of emotions—longing, pleasure, grief, guilt, shame—run through me in an instant. […] I have told myself over the years that Violet would not have whispered a word of our intimacy to anyone. Especially to her sister, who was her polar opposite in temperament and tastes.”

Dash reflects on the range of emotions that he always feels in “Rose’s” presence. Notably, although he supposedly feels disdain for her, he also cannot help feeling a sense of longing intermingled with his grief and shame. Dash habitually attempts to suppress and ignore this mix of emotions by actively avoiding any reminders of the explosion, and for this reason, he reacts with intense anger to Daisy’s work at the newspaper. This passage also reiterates the stark difference between the Flowers sisters’ temperaments, to the extent that Dash cannot believe that Violet would have told Rose about their past intimacy.

“Lettie was a violent storm that swallowed you up and spit you out, choking and gasping for air on some abandoned beach. Which is to say she left lots of heartbreak in her wake, like her dad had done in his time. In our time.”

“Rose” reflects on the temperament of her daughter, Lettie, and her words are tinged with regret—both for her daughter’s flaws and her own mistakes. Before the novel reveals “Rose’s” true identity and Lettie’s real parentage, there are occasional mentions of the idea that Lettie inherited her personality and character from her father. In retrospect, it becomes clear that Lettie’s wild and selfish nature is designed to mirror both Violet’s notorious excesses and Dash’s reckless character when he was young.

“Yes! It is a disaster! And how can I have lived in a town almost two months and not heard anything about it? No one has mentioned it, not even my grandma. […] Something this huge must have had an impact. So many people died! Shouldn’t we remember them?”

Daisy pushes back against Myra’s reluctance to support her desire to write a retrospective series on the dance hall explosion. Daisy’s shock at never having heard about the explosion is an echo of Anderson’s own surprise upon finally discovering the Bond Dance Hall Explosion after having spent many years in West Plains. As Daisy attempts to remember those whose lives were both lost and impacted in the tragedy, her quest becomes a metatextual reference to Anderson’s attempt at doing the same thing by writing this novel.

“Because I know that sometimes a punishment does not fit the crime, the price too high for that one unthinking moment, one ill-advised decision. That hard and terrible consequences can ripple out from a split-second action for years. For lifetimes.”

Anderson often designs one character’s assertion or reflection to apply equally well to other characters in the narrative. In this passage, Dash bitterly reflects on his parents’ lives, musing on the fact that his father’s seemingly innocuous decision to borrow a farmer’s mule had consequences that negatively impacted the entire family. However, Dash’s reflection also holds true for Rose and Violet because the sisters’ seemingly harmless decision to switch places for a night leads to a terrible end for Rose and a lifetime of guilt, shame, and secrecy for Violet.

“I can’t look at Daisy right now. I couldn’t believe Possum Flats could rationalize the death of a nineteen-year-old girl by immolation as something that she had coming to her, either. But that was how it had felt.”

Daisy’s grandmother explains to the girl that many in the town believed that Violet deserved to die in the explosion because of her wild nature. This attitude reveals the intense moral policing that was directed toward young women in Violet’s youth, and this explanation contextualizes her actions following the explosion. She believed that she had to adopt Rose’s identity, marry George, and pass her daughter off as his if she and her unborn child were to have any semblance of a life in Possum Flats. Violet knew that if the town could fabricate a misguided moral justification for the tragic deaths that took place in the explosion, then having a child outside of marriage would be an unforgivable transgression.

“Possum Flats loves its heroes—but it’s a love that keeps you stuck, so you can’t grow or change. Or just be you.”

Joe explains to Daisy why he feels he cannot pursue his love for art and cartooning, as the town sees him solely as the star quarterback. Once again, Anderson has one character make an assertion that holds equally true for another, for Joe’s observation also describes Jimmy’s experience. Jimmy does not believe his public reputation as a “hero” to be a positive development. Burdened by his secret guilt over causing the dance hall explosion, he, too, felt “stuck,” with no conceivable way to grow, change, or be himself, as he did not have the courage to confess his crime to the town.

“I answered a lot of questions early on, back when the police and firefighters and grieving families wanted to know ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ But eventually, everyone realized that ‘why’ and ‘how’ didn’t change anything. Those who needed answers blamed God and the sinners who had brought down His wrath on us like a bolt of lightning. And none of us talked about it.”

In harsh, pragmatic tones, Hazel describes her experience of the explosion to Daisy and Joe. This passage explains the reasons why many people turned to moralizing in order to find some logical reason for such a senseless tragedy. With no answers as to how the explosion took place, people began to rationalize the event as a divine act. While this approach allowed them to assuage their fears and anxieties about the tragedy, it also wrought irreparable harm on residents like Violet, who lived as “Rose” for years and was forced to listen to the many comments suggesting that the wayward “Violet” deserved to die in the explosion. As Hazel suggests in this passage, the lack of conversation about the incident only adds to the town’s unprocessed grief, and this decades-long code of silence explains the intense reactions that Daisy’s articles elicit.

“The strangest part was being called a hero, when I knew I had brought this hell down on everyone with my anger and a single match. But I didn’t set anyone straight. Even with my insides sick and rotten with the knowledge of what I had done.”

As Jimmy reflects on his role in the explosion and his inability to confess his crime, his story underlines The Traumatic Effects of Shame and Secrecy. Despite being well loved and well respected in town, Jimmy has never been able to reveal the truth about the explosion. By describing his deep shame in terms of disease and putrefaction, he invokes the powerful sense that his entire life has been irreparably corrupted by the deadly combination of his crime and his lifelong silence. Thus, his actions lead to a secrecy that keeps him isolated from everyone around him despite his status as a highly respected citizen.

“I’ve never been religious, but even I had to wonder—at the tender age of fifteen—what kind of unforgivable things I must have done to have witnessed the wholesale human suffering I did that night.”

Smiley describes his experience of the night of the explosion to Daisy. Unlike many in the town, Smiley views the explosion as a tragic accident rather than a divine punishment for sinners. Because his role in the town is to use his photography skills to record the truth of each new event, he does not assign fanciful reasons to the facts. However, even he is forced to pause and reflect on what he might have done that would make him deserve to witness such trauma. Smiley’s reflection underlines the intensity of this experience for victims and survivors alike, and his words illustrate the urge to rationalize incomprehensible events and make sense of tragedies.

“What strikes me, reading about Smiley Barnes, is that the dance hall explosion determined his career. It is incredible to consider, how one night, even a few dark hours, could shape the trajectory of a life. Of a life’s work. But what is truly remarkable to me is that Smiley’s story is not unique. I found my calling that terrible night, too.”

Dash reads Daisy’s article on Smiley and reflects that both of them found their life’s work because of their experiences on the night of the explosion. His thoughts reflect the enduring impact of past tragedies, stressing that the lives of many people were vastly altered by the events of that night. Dash and Smiley both find their respective callings, as does Jimmy, and even Violet’s secret life and her vocation of running the funeral home are brought about by that night, as she comes to marry George and inherits the Steinkamps’ family business.

“My vision blurs. Am I having some sort of heart attack or stroke? But, no. It is just tears. Tears for Jimmy. For whatever impossibly heavy burden he had been lugging around by himself all of these years. How much of it was true and how much imagined? Whatever he had done or not done back then, couldn’t he see the worth in what he had done for all of us?”

In this passage, “Rose” mourns Jimmy’s unfortunate death as she prepares his body for burial, and she also wonders what burdens compelled him to end a life that was marked by years of good deeds for the community. In a sense, her thoughts offer Jimmy a form of posthumous absolution, for even though she never learns of his role in causing the explosion, she acknowledges that his subsequent deeds hold great “worth” for the entire town. Ironically, “Rose’s” thoughts can be applied to her own life. She, too, carries around a terrible secret for 50 years following the explosion, and despite the townspeople’s perceptions of Violet Flowers, she grows to be a productive member of the community. In addition to running the funeral home, Violet is a kind, helpful person, as Julie, Mo Wheeler’s daughter, asserts to Daisy during their conversation.

“That incredible hair has been hiding a secret. And in an instant, the hairbrush had revealed it to me. I want to make doubly sure I haven’t imagined it. Grandma has a violet birthmark on the back of her neck, right beneath the base of her skull. Violet.”

When Daisy discovers her grandmother’s violet birthmark and realizes her true identity, the significance of the birthmark as a plot device is fully revealed, as is the symbolic role of the Flowers sisters’ hair. Rose and Violet both use their hair to assume each other’s identities at different times. Rose cuts her hair short to pose as Violet at the doomed dance, while Violet later maintains a long braid to hide her birthmark and masquerade as Rose.

“He never would have shot himself. I feel in the very marrow of my bones it is that girl who has done this to him. This whole unearthing of our past and our ghosts. It’s too much. The girl has gone too far.”

The short, blunt sentences in this passage deliver a sense of Dash’s self-righteous fury as he shortsightedly blames Daisy for Jimmy’s death by suicide. At this point, Dash is unable to accept that Jimmy may have been carrying his own burdens from the night of the explosion. Rather than examining this idea and applying it to himself and the rest of the town, Dash denounces any attempts to revisit the past that he is trying so desperately to suppress in his own thoughts. This moment illustrates his tendency to repress the topics that make him uncomfortable.

“Violet was dead. I was dead. Which was—as terrible as it sounded—the right choice. Like the Old Testament, vengeful-God stories of Noah or Sodom and Gomorrah: the wicked had perished; the sinner had reaped the reward of her sins. And meanwhile, the good, dutiful daughter was left to live out her remaining days. There was a terrible beauty in the justice of it all. Only I would know the truth: God did not care a speck.”

After the explosion, Violet decides to adopt Rose’s identity in order to keep her sister’s memory alive and to ensure a decent life for her unborn child. However, Violet carries a great deal of shame and guilt over the fact of her survival, as is evidenced in this passage. Even though she understands the flaws in any narrative that insists that a 19-year-old deserves to die, she cannot help but buy into this moralistic stance herself, as she truly believes that she did not deserve to live when Rose lost her life.

“Would a banker’s daughter sit at the same drugstore counter with one of the working boys from the auto repair or—even more unimaginable—someone like Dale Diggs, one of Possum Flats’ handful of Blacks? I recognized death as the great equalizer, an idea that would surface over and over again during my years as a funeral director. No one is special; no one is spared.”

In this scene, Violet reflects on the fact that all of the unidentified dead were buried in the same place and marked by the same headstone. Death is a recurring idea throughout the novel, from Violet’s job as a funeral home director to Daisy’s job of writing obituaries. Through this multifaceted approach, Anderson explores the secular nature of death through tragedy, suggesting that no one remains untouched or unchanged in the wake of such events.

“Since Grandma ‘came clean’ to me last week—and then to all of Possum Flats in the article that came out two days ago—it feels different around here. Lighter. Maybe she feels free after living a lie for so long. I’m not tiptoeing around the truth anymore, either. We’re finally comfortable together.”

Daisy reflects on the fact that she has grown more comfortable with her grandmother in the days since Violet’s confession of the truth about her past. This shift illustrates the healing power of honesty and the ameliorating effect of confronting the past. Despite her long-held belief that she would be condemned for her actions, Violet now discovers that admitting the truth brings her closer to the people she cares about, starting with her granddaughter.

“Maybe home is something you can’t run from, a place you find yourself searching for even after you think you’ve gotten away. You look for it in every town or city, apartment or house—but it’s slippery, shifty. Because home is a feeling, and the people and place that inspire that feeling.”

Daisy reflects on the fact that Possum Flats still serves as a home for Lettie despite the woman’s choice to leave as early as she could. As Daisy muses on the true definition of a home and determines it to be a “slippery, shifty” concept, her thoughts reflect her years of wandering in search of a place to belong. However, the events of the novel have already proven that Possum Flats holds that elusive quality of belonging: the sense that “home is a feeling” rather than a physical location. Over the course of the summer and her work on the articles, she has begun to put down roots and form meaningful relationships with the people in Possum Flats, and the town becomes her home. Daisy’s growth in this area is reiterated when she chooses to stay behind after Lettie leaves town months later.

“It’s good, I want to say. It is good to test and try on different ideas of what it means to be godly, a good person. To push back against what you are taught and preached until you find what is true. And follow it—relentlessly, exhaustively—holding it up constantly against the changing light and asking hard questions. Doubt is just the dark, necessary side of understanding. Of reconciliation. Of peace. I can’t tell her this. But she is figuring it out on her own.”

Dash’s spirit watches approvingly as Patty tries on the nail polish that he gifted her, even though wearing nail polish is against her religion. Toward the end of his life, Dash finally reaches a place of self-acceptance and lets go of his rigid notions, achieving a degree of reconciliation and peace. This transformation prompts his reflection that it is good to question and doubt matters in the midst of a broader search for understanding. Over the course of the novel, Dash’s character shifts from empty rebellion to rigid conformity, and he ultimately finds a place of peace when he finally decides to embrace the omnipresence of doubt and ambiguity in everyday life.