Loss Of Innocence In Alice Walker's The Flowers

When Myop’s summer ends, her innocence also ends in Alice Walker’s short story “The Flowers.” In the story, Myop is a carefree ten-year-old girl walking through the woods near her family’s cabin. She goes exploring until she stumbles upon a dead body. That moment is a loss of innocence for Myop. All throughout the story, Walker foreshadows Myop’s innocence leaving her. For example, “She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment” (Walker). This quotation demonstrates how Myop is still an innocent child. Myop feels light, meaning there is no burden of any kind to weigh her down. The world still has a warmness to it for Myop as she walks under the sun.

Later in the story, Walker foreshadows Myop’s innocence leaving her. Walker describes, “Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream” (Walker). This text is used as an analogy for Myop’s innocence leaving. The tiny white bubbles is the event that will lead to her innocence leaving. The thin black scale of soil is what remains of her innocence. The water then carries her innocence away forever. As Myop watches this natural event, she is helpless to stop the water, and her innocence, flowing away. Although Myop does not want her innocence of childhood to wash away, it is inevitable that it will go. Myop tries turning back to her house, but it is too late. “Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then she stepped smack into his eyes” (Walker). Myop tries to go back to the innocence of her life at the house, the peacefulness of being a