The Destruction Of Innocence In Alice Walker's The Flowers

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“The days had never been as beautiful as these… each day a golden surprise” (1), that’s what Alice Walker wrote in her short story The Flowers. In her story, a ten-year-old African American girl makes her way through the woods, careless and oblivious to her surroundings. Picking flowers and admiring the scenery along the way she discovers something that will forever change her life, leaving her flowers and innocence behind her. Myop is young and sees the world as beautiful, everyday a new day but what she finds one morning is a surprise she never expected. The name Myop translates as “near-sighted” or “not paying attention to ones surroundings”, which is how Myop’s character is portrayed. When she discovers a dead African American murdered laying forgotten in the woods she finally …show more content…

She seems to only gravitate towards the comfort of her bubble, “[circling] back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning” (Walker, 1). But soon finds herself looking into the face of racism that yanks her innocence and throws her into reality. When Myop begins to go back to her home she steps on something that she doesn’t quite know what it is. Our narrator tells us that, “It was then she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself” (Walker, 1). Now that Myop has found herself in this situation she doesn’t know what to do, which was most likely why she reached down without hesitation. She doesn’t realize what she has stepped on and most would think that it is ludacris that she doesn’t realize it’s a person, but that’s just the naivety of Myop. After Myop frees her foot, “it was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise” (Walker, 1), why she would yelp in surprise and not fright could indicate that she may have already seen or witnessed

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