What caused Myop's transformation in "The Flowers"?
Myop’s confrontation with the grim and dark reality of the world surrounding her induced the change in her. So far cocooned in parental love and care, Myop had been living in her own innocent and beautiful world. The discovery of the skull of a black man introduces her to an altogether different world, that's filled with violence and hatred.
Until this discovery, Myop had lived in her little idyllic world. Flowers, “pretty ferns and leaves,” streams, the woods, “the warm sun” and the harmless birds and animals including chickens and pigs, and her mother were the only members of this world.
One day, while going back home from the woods, she accidentally stepped on a human skull. It was lying covered under leaves and twigs. Close to the skull was a tree, on one of its branches a rope was hanging. This clearly indicated that the skull belonged to a...
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black person who must have been lynched.
Lynching African-Americans in public was quite common until mid-twentieth century. A black man could be lynched for practically no reason. It was a means to establish white supremacy over blacks.
The skull and the rope made it clear that a man was brutally murdered. She wasn't prepared to see this ugly face of the world that surrounded her. She was appalled and horrified. With this, her ideal world of innocence and beauty was shattered, leaving Myop a changed girl.
What event forces Myop to change in "The Flowers", and what action shows this change?
Myop’s unexpected introduction to the brutal and grisly aspect of the world brings about a change in her. Until now, her world began and ended with the woods, the stream, flowers, pigs and chickens and her mother. It had been a perfect place untouched by evil.
The human skull she steps on and the “frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled” remains of the rope the man was hanged with tell her profusely about the brutality and hatred existing in the same world which, until now, had been a seemingly idyllic place.
This very realization initiates a change in Myop.
She’s been out into the woods and found “armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges.” While on her way back home, she steps over a human skull. She is surprised and gazes “around the spot with interest.” She plucks “a wild pink rose” growing close to the skull.
The rotted rope clinging to a branch of an oak tree above the skull and the "rotted remains of a noose" reveal to Myop the horrifying and ugly truth about the killing of the man.
The flowers in her hand symbolize her naiveté and innocence. But, with the discovery of the truth, she loses her innocence. The meaning and significance of flowers, too, changes for her. In a very subtle way does Alice Walker disclose the change in Myop in the following sentence:
Myop laid down her flowers.
The dropping of the flowers happens spontaneously. This is highly symbolic. The act of dropping the flowers establishes the fact that Myop is no more the same girl that had left to explore the woods a little ago. She is a transformed girl whose limited vision of the world has widened. Now, she has acquainted the real world, that’s grisly and horrid.