Killers of the Flower Moon: Imagery 4 key examples

The image is beautiful and hopeful before it turns horrifying. The little white flowers, which look like confetti spread by the gods all over the hills and prairies, represent the Osage in the 1920s. They had lived on this land for many, many generations; as far as they were concerned, they had been put there by the gods. The tall plants that soon pop up and begin choking them out represent the greedy white settlers who moved into the area and began murdering the Osage over their oil headrights. In one month, the white flowers are violently driven underground until they can work their way up to the surface again the following year. Grann calls his book "Killers of the Flower Moon" because he sees the white murderers as sinister weeds that would rather kill the Osage than share resources with them. The title also acknowledges that the Osage, like the flowers that return each April, are resilient and have fought their way back again and again.

The allegory is imperfect. For one thing, the flower-killing is a natural process. The murders Grann chronicles were anything but natural. What's more, the white flowers suggest a little too much innocence and naivety. The Osage had endured a great deal of settler colonial trauma prior to the murders and had learned by the 1920s to be on their guard. For instance, the United States' Indian Removal policy stripped them of a huge portion of their traditional land. Even if the gods had a hand in putting them in the Osage territory, the U.S. government also had a major hand in determining where they would live. The Osage understood that and had formed advocacy groups to fight further injustice. People like Mollie Burkhart and her sisters had already survived abusive Catholic boarding schools where they were forced to speak English and dress in western clothing. Mollie later wore a traditional blanket in defiance of these edicts from her childhood. Still, the image of the flower-killing moon is poignant and captures the way even Mollie and her family members were taken aback by the intense betrayal they faced in the 1920s. As he will do throughout the book, Grann uses nature imagery to great effect to set the tone for a painful story.

The image of the warm, bright sun high in the sky is juxtaposed against the image of the dark hole swallowing up the coffin and Anna's body inside of it. The white coffin "glistens" in the sunlight, reminiscent of Anna's smile the last time Mollie saw her. The "haunting wails" are the sound of traditional Osage death songs mixed with cries of grief from Anna's mourners. These unbridled sounds capture the intense feeling of loss Mollie and her community are experiencing. At the same time, before long, the dull thud of "earth clapping against the lid" of Anna's coffin blunts the "haunting wails." This moment of profound loss is all mixed up with the world moving on: the sun still rises every day, and Anna's body must be disposed of. Mollie's world is forever changed, and yet the world itself will remain largely the same.

The sensory images of hair wrapping around the investigator's leg and a beaten body slowly emerging from the water both add to the reader's sense of horror. This was a real person who, like Anna Brown and the rest of the victims, was cruelly turned into so many body parts to rot away. However, the specific imagery Grann uses is worth a second look. The investigator wades into the water and first must think his feet are entangled in plant matter. The plants turn out to be human hair. Mary's leg bones might have been sticks fallen to the bottom of the water. Grann describes her body as "a human trunk," again drawing parallels between her body parts and the parts of a tree. The bayou spits out Mary's body in pieces that can be mistaken for parts of nature.

The way Mary's body emerges out of the water is emblematic of a greater idea in Grann's book: the land around Pawhuska will likely always have more secrets to give up that no one has yet realized are buried there. The historical archive, likewise, holds secrets that aren't yet apparent. The Mary Lewis manuscript is one of these secrets. Only now has Grann finally pulled it off the shelf and noticed that it may be part of the story of the Reign of Terror.

In the Bible, Cain and Abel are brothers, both sons of Adam and Eve. Cain is the eldest and is tasked with working the land. Abel, meanwhile, is tasked with raising sheep. When God is more appreciative of Abel's work than Cain's, Cain gets jealous and kills his younger brother. He lies when God comes asking after Abel, claiming not to know where he is. God, who is all-knowing, calls Cain out on his lie. "Your brother's blood cries out from the ground," he tells Cain, meaning that the very ground Cain is supposed to work is now obviously soaked with blood from Abel's murder. God curses Cain to a lifetime of hard work with no yield: never again will he be able to find any land to work that produces crops. Instead, he will forever live with a guilty conscience. Any person who tries to kill Cain for what he has done will face a seven-fold greater punishment. This curse makes it clear that no earthly force can ever right the wrong Cain has committed.

Webb's use of this line from the Bible—and Grann's choice to end the book on this line—emphasizes the lingering tragedy of the Osage murders. A long history of racist legislation led the Osage to live above rich oil deposits, but the murders themselves were motivated by simple greed and envy, much like Cain's. Hale and other white Oklahomans believed they, too, deserved the riches the Osage reaped from the land. So great was their bitterness that they began killing. The allusion emphasizes that by the time of the murders, this was not a simple struggle between one racial group and another. Rather, because Osage and white Americans had been marrying one another and having children together for a few generations, it was a family affair. Like Abel, many of the Osage were betrayed by their own loved ones.

Now, generations later, the descendants of murderers and murdered alike still live with the fallout. Margie Burkhart, for instance, descends from both Mollie and Ernest. The auditory image of the blackjack leaves "rattling restlessly in the wind" hints at the presence of God refusing to let anyone involved rest with a quiet conscience. No matter how much work Grann or anyone else does to solve the mysteries of the Osage murders, there is no way to make it right. The blood will forever have been spilled. In fact, trying to settle the case like Grann does may result in an even more restless conscience than the killers themselves ever had.