What is the significance of the name "MYOP" in The Flowers?
Myop's name probably indicates that she is, figuratively, "short-sighted," or myopic. In Alice Walker's short story "The Flowers," Myop does not remain short-sighted but only begins the story that way.
At the start of "The Flowers," Myop is an innocent, carefree child living in a post-Civil War world where many African Americans in the South are sharecroppers. Their jobs were difficult and did not yield much financial gain, and they also still had to deal with the racism of the world around them. It seems that Myop's parents, however, have protected her from this reality. She joyfully prances around the natural world and seems to have an almost idyllic childhood.
However, Myop goes farther than usual one day, and she comes across a decayed corpse. It is implied that the corpse was a man—a sharecropper—who was lynched, as there is a rotting noose at the scene as...
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well. This discovery opens Myop's eyes to the tragedies and the dangers of the world from which she has been thus far protected. The end of the story states that the summer was over, which figuratively means that Myop has grown up as a result of her experience. She is no longer short-sighted and understands something about the world that she did not know at the start of "The Flowers."
I think the previous answerer meant to say Myopia, which is the medical name for nearsightedness. However, Myopathy, which is a muscular disease, fits the character as well. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke defines myopathy as a neuromuscular disorder
in which the primary symptom is muscle weakness due to dysfunction of muscle fiber. Other symptoms of myopathy can include include muscle cramps, stiffness, and spasm.
Ordinarily when a 10-year-old child--or a person of any age--not just discovers a dead body but actually steps on it, the response would be horror. We expect her to run screaming to tell someone. Myop, however, just reaches down to pull her shoe out of the man's head, as if her reactions are dysfunctional. She even continues to pick flowers. The only thing that seems to move her is the sight of the noose around the dead man's neck.
Myop could be short for myopathy. Myopathy is a condition that leaves a person with short-sightedness. Myop revels in her own world. She takes pleasure in her family, but might not see it as clearly as she should.
There is also the issue of racism. Myop could be short-sighted in the fact that racism is already a part of her life. She tends not to look into things to deeply.
What does Myop's name add to her characterization in "The Flowers"?
Myop's name looks much like the word myopia, which denotes nearsightedness, and the word myopic, which pertains to being short-sighted, both physically and figuratively.
The young girl of Alice Walker's story who gathers flowers is, indeed, myopic as she focuses mainly upon what is near to her, or what she has done before. Figuratively, she is also narrow in her vision of the realities of life. As the story begins, the narrator describes Myop as carrying a short, knobby stick that she uses to strike at chickens and beat out the melody of a song on the fence. With this stick, she walks along the fence of the family's farm on which they are sharecroppers.
She had explored the woods behind the house many times. . . Today she made her own path. . . [and] found. . . an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweet suds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds.
After gathering flowers for some time, Myop begins to "circle back" to her home, but in her myopia she unexpectedly "stepped smack into his eyes." Her heel becomes wedged somehow in the broken skull of a dead man. Unafraid, Myop reaches down to free her foot. When she sees the "naked grin" of death on this skull, Myop utters "a little yelp of surprise," and she "gazed around the spot with interest." She is distracted by a pink rose, though, and moves to pick it up and add it to her bundle.
It is only when Myop realizes the dead man has been murdered that her mental vision expands to comprehend the horrible act that has been committed. She has seen the evidence of hatred and bigotry. Myop lays down her flowers, symbolic of her innocence. "And the summer was over."