The Flowers

Through the character of Myop, a 10-year-old Black girl, Walker depicts the negative effects of racism on childhood innocence. Myop begins the story in a blissful attitude. So enamored of the day, she skips playfully around her family property. The lightness of her action is ascribed to her feelings about the beauty of her environment—not the “rusty boards” of the cabin but the sweetness of the expectation of harvest. This she can feel viscerally, in her nose, mouth, and hands. She behaves as one who is carefree, and the reader can approximate her age based on the ease and unsteadied air of her movements. This opening is necessary to communicate the extent to which Myop’s youthfulness begets her nearsightedness; her age circumscribes her awareness and occludes her vision. Myop’s worldview is informed by that which she can experience with her senses. The troubled path to adulthood begins when Myop “turn[s] her back” (Paragraph 3) on her home in favor of an exploration of the wider world. This natural inclination of childhood inevitably leads to a curiosity that expedites her childhood’s ending.

As Myop wanders from the beaten path, she comes to a “gloomy” cove whose stark “strangeness” undoes the “peacefulness” of the domestic spaces she knows well (Paragraph 5).