In Alice Walker's short story “The Flowers”, the author depicts the story of a ten-year-old girl named Myop who grows up in one day. The story begins with Myop's feelings of peace and happiness. Walker's descriptions show Myop jumping happily while exploring the forest behind his family's sharecropper cabin. The sharecropper's cabin is a symbol of poverty, subordination and racism. However, Myop, at the beginning of the story, apparently does not seem to understand the extent of his family's suffering. Therefore, the image also foreshadows and symbolizes the suffering and racism that she will soon understand as she leaves behind her childhood innocence. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Her happiness is also represented in her wildflower-picking business, an enterprise in which she is so absorbed that she carries it a mile or more from home'. The further she moves away from the peace and security of her home, the more she ventures to discover the harsh reality of the world. As she heads out into the woods and makes her own path, she comes across the body of a dead man, and her life will never be the same. The central theme that the author left in this short story is that it is a coming-of-age story and it expresses how easily our innocence can be lost. The author uses symbols to convey his messages throughout the story. The first symbol given in this story is the main character's name, Myop, the root word "myope" meaning short-sighted. This just showed how small her world is and she can only see and be affected by what is close to her, this has kept her innocent and ignorant of the real world outside of her childhood. Additionally, the woods symbolize the world around Myop, which can be both violent and beautiful. The forest has compromised her entire world and made her oblivious to the harsh realities of the real world, where snakes are the least of her worries. That day, Myop decided to “make his own way” and go deeper into the forest. Myop had “explored the woods behind the house several times” but, for the most part, she did so with her mother who was always nearby. That was the main reason it felt like an adventure. However, the day she leaves alone, she makes the terrifying discovery of the dead man, who symbolizes the harsh realities of her own race, from which her mother could not protect her forever. His death represents the many African Americans who died due to racial hatred during the time period of this story. Myop wakes up when she discovers a dead man. At first, she remains innocent, she even bends down to pick a wild rose that grows close to her body. However, his innocent act of picking the wild rose reveals to him the truth that the man had been hanged. Myop notices the remains of the noose used to hang him, she leaves her flowers on the spot, and the author ends the story with “And summer was over.” The season of summer is used to symbolize Myop's childhood. In the spring and summer, she was innocent, happy, and the result of her inexperience and ignorance of the world. Myop has undergone a tremendous transformation, growing from an innocent child to a more mature person with a clear understanding of the world and its violence. Like summer, his childhood is now over. Now that she has seen not only death but also racist cruelty, her innocence and ignorance disappear. She lost her innocence and her childhood, showing us that the main theme is the loss of innocence. By reading this story, readers realize that we.