“On an early evening in May of 1963”
Narration, the opening words of the story
The story opens like a piece of reporting, with a precise month and year, which gives it the feel of a true account. The date also carries dramatic irony for readers in 1977, who knew what the rest of 1963, and the war mentioned on the radio, would bring. The calm, factual tone lulls the reader before anything strange appears.
“a young man with his hand in his pocket”
Narration, the opening sentence
On a first reading the detail is casual, even jaunty: a relaxed young man strolling on a spring evening. After the ending it reads very differently, because the narration reveals that the hammer was in his coat pocket “where it had been all along”, and a hidden hand now looks like concealment. This is the story’s first planted clue, placed in the very first sentence.
“The air was soft and beautiful”
Narration, the sentence after the opening
The simple adjectives soft and beautiful create an idyllic mood, a kind of pathetic fallacy in which the evening seems to share the young man’s happiness. King deliberately makes the setting as gentle as possible so that the violence at the end lands against it with full force. The softness of the air is a promise the story breaks.
“the calm and lovely violet of dusk”
Narration, the opening paragraph
The colour violet is soft, romantic and the colour of flowers, so the sky itself seems to belong to a love story. But dusk is the moment when day turns to night, and the story follows the same movement: from light into the darkness of the lane. The phrase is beautiful and also quietly ominous.
“sweet nostalgia”
Narration, the thoughts of the old woman who calls out to him, early in the story
The old woman responds to the young man through memories of her own youth. The adjective sweet makes the moment tender, but nostalgia means looking at the present through the past, and that is exactly how she misreads him. It is the first of several moments where an onlooker sees a romantic type, not the man.
“bad news that no one listened to”
Narration, introducing the radio news at the flower cart
King tells the reader exactly how the clue that follows will work: it is bad news, and nobody attends to it. The phrase describes the people on the avenue, but it also describes the reader, who will hear the news and move on. On a second reading it is almost a confession of the story’s method.
“hammer murderer was still on the loose”
Narration, the first item of that radio news
This is the central clue, placed in plain view. It is the first item of the news, but it arrives as background noise in the middle of a scene about buying flowers, so the reader, like everyone on the avenue, hears it without connecting it to the young man. The word still suggests previous killings and a city used to the idea.
“would bear watching”
Narration, the radio’s report of what President Kennedy had said about Vietnam
The idiom is mild, the language of a statesman predicting a minor difficulty, relayed by a newsreader. Readers in 1977 knew that Vietnam grew into a war in which American combat troops fought from 1965, and that Kennedy himself would be dead by the end of 1963, so the understatement is heavy with dramatic irony. It also teaches the reader how to read the story: the news that matters is the news nobody is attending to.
“The vendor’s face was normally sour”
Narration, at the flower cart
The adverb normally tells us this man is not easily charmed, which makes his smile at the young man the strongest evidence yet of his innocence. King uses the vendor as a sceptical witness who is won over, so that when the truth is revealed, the reader realises that even the hardest judge of people was fooled.
“Norma’s favourite”
Narration, as he turns back to the flower cart, remembering the Valencia oranges he once brought her. The UK spelling, as Hodder prints it; American editions spell it the American way
This is the first time Norma is named, and she arrives inside a list of small, cheap presents he has brought her, a box of sweets, a bracelet, some oranges she liked. The detail makes her a living woman with tastes of her own, and the reader has no reason to doubt it. On a second reading the phrase is poignant and disturbing at once: these are memories at least ten years old, still guiding what he does.
“His own smile trembled a little”
Narration, in the lane, as the woman’s smile fades when they draw close
This is the first crack in the romantic surface. Her smile has just faded, and the phrase his own shows him reacting to her face; the verb trembled shows his certainty wavering. For a moment reality presses against the delusion, and he wonders whether he could be mistaken. King makes the reader feel the unease before explaining it, so tension rises ahead of the reveal.
“I brought you flowers”
The young man, to the woman in the lane, as he hands her the roses
The words are the simplest romantic gesture there is, the kind a nervous young man might say on a first date. The narration adds that he says them “in a happy relief”, because a moment before he had doubted whether she was Norma and has talked himself out of it. The reader still hears a love scene, which makes the reversal that follows all the more brutal.
“Thank you, but you’re mistaken”
The woman in the lane, handing the flowers back
Her words are polite and gentle: she thanks him and smiles before she corrects him. She is the one person who tells him the truth, and she begins to give him her name. He cuts her off by whispering Norma’s, which shows in one exchange how completely he overwrites the real woman in front of him.
“it was always for you”
The young man, to the woman in the lane, as he draws the hammer
A phrase from a love letter or a love song, spoken as he takes out a weapon. The word always shows the obsession: everything he has done has been for Norma. On a second reading it is chilling, because it implies the earlier killings too were, in his mind, acts of love for her.
“her mouth an opening black O of terror”
Narration, the woman’s reaction as she backs away
The woman’s mouth becomes a black, empty shape, the letter O, as if she were a drawing of a scream. The image is stark and almost wordless, reducing her to fear, and the black stands in harsh contrast with the violet of dusk at the opening. It is the moment the romantic mood finally breaks.
“she wasn’t Norma, Norma was dead, she had been dead for ten years”
Narration, the reveal, in the lane
The twist is delivered in a rush of short clauses joined by commas, as if the truth were breaking through all at once. Norma is repeated, and so is dead, which drives the fact home. The flat, final ten years reframes everything, and the sentence runs straight on to say that “it didn’t matter”, which is more frightening than the fact itself.
“kill the scream”
Narration, as he attacks her
Three blunt words. He does not think of killing a woman but of killing a sound, which shows how completely he has stopped seeing her as a person. The sentence around them runs on without a break, through the falling roses to the cats yowling in the dark, so the violence is told through rhythm and repetition rather than graphic detail.
“he knew what his name was”
Narration, as he leaves the lane after the killing
The man who has had no name all story is finally named, and he names himself: Love. The certainty of knew is disturbing, because he has just been shown that the woman was not Norma, yet he is sure of who he is, and sure that Norma is still waiting for him. The naming closes the irony of the title: the man who loved flowers has become, in his own mind, love itself.
“more beautiful than springtime, it was young love”
Narration, the last words of the story: the thought of a woman on her front steps as he walks past
The story’s most sentimental line is also its last, and it comes after the killing. By setting young love above springtime itself, the watcher crowns the young man as the embodiment of romance. The irony is savage: the reader has just seen what this love does, and the story closes by handing the view back to someone who cannot know.
“the gloom of the encroaching night”
Narration, the final sentence, as he disappears from her view
The light that opened the story has gone. Gloom is heavier and darker than dusk, and encroaching suggests something advancing threateningly, taking over territory. The young man walks off into that darkness, still searching for Norma, so the last image quietly implies that the killing will happen again.