by Alizah Grace

Created on: February 25, 2008

Flowers and music, both emotional symbols, appear at significant moments throughout Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen. While Alix Kates Shulman's protagonist, Sasha, prefaces her tale with acknowledgment of the lack of chronological order, the flowers and music place poignant markers on Sasha's emotions and development. Each mention of a specific flower or composer effectively captures the mood of the scene, marks a change in a character or transformation of a situation, and serves as symbolic measures of development within the text for the reader to more aptly comprehend. "Flowers, after all, are the sexual reproductive organs of plants, and as such they are emblematic of all sorts of intimate proceedings" (Flower Shop Network).

Sasha chooses to commence with the moments before her husband Frank meets her at the Munich railroad station after her excursion in Spain. Armed with anemones, Frank is unaware that Sasha intends to announce her unfaithfulness. "They were the first flowers he had ever bought [her]" (4), after four years of marriage; ironically, a bouquet of flowers that mean forsaken and fading hope, yet contradictorily, unfading love and sincerity (Tokenz). Sasha describes them as flowers that "grow taller so gaudily right before your eyes, like a time-lapse film" (4), a description analogous to the negative spiral of her marriage. For Sasha, this floral welcome from Frank bitterly indicates that fading hope, while Frank ignorantly believes in its sincerity.

Sasha's vivid flashback to the flamenco music of Spain and her lover Manolo radiates from the pages, as she juxtaposes her dreaded Munich return with the subsequent tale of fervent and sensuous love. This dance and musical style of the Andalusian Gypsies reflects the same ephemeral nature of her tryst. When the music stops and she and Manolo part ways with the traveling performers, the passion, too, silences.

Finding neither satisfaction or nor comfort in her dying marriage or her short-lived Spanish escapade, she flees to Italy. In the midst of her travels, she recalls her childhood. She shares the loss of her virginity as her "daffodils being crushed" (68). Daffodils, while symbolic of respect, regard and unrequited love (Tokenz), can also be a symbol of hidden love not to be shared with the entire world. The "hidden love" of virginity lost is a momentous event in young Sasha's life. Interestingly, daffodils' genus name, narcissus, are sometimes referred to as buttercups. However, the presence of buttercups

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>