The Flowers Alice Walker’s short story, “The Flowers,” is essentially a coming-of-age story that expresses the theme of loss of innocence. The girl in the story’s name is Myop. Myop is short for Myopia, which is an eye condition where one cannot see things far away. Myop cannot see beyond the beauty and happiness of her childhood. In the story, Myop was skipping along a trail, thumping her stick to a beat, doing what most ten year olds do. In the text the speaker states, “Today she made her own path…” While she was going about her way, she came across something remarkable. The speaker describes it as tall man with large white teeth, all broken. His clothes had rotted away with only a few strings and the green buckles left from his overalls.
