Myop The Flowers

"The Flowers" contains a multitude of symbolic references, including Myop's name itself. The young girl's name is derived from myopia, also known as near-sightedness. For the girl to fully understand the complications of her racial background, she must closely experience the severe violence of racism, which effectively occurs in the story’s climax. As Myop is walking along the shallow banks, she observes "tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil." Myop comes from a sharecropper family and has been directly affected by racial issues, symbolized in this story by the "white bubbles" disrupting the "black scale of soil'. The representation of racial problems becomes further iterated by Myop's discovery later within the woods.