The Flowers Literary Elements

Short story; flash fiction; civil rights / activist literature

The short story takes place in the South after Reconstruction.

The short story is conveyed in the third person by an omniscient narrator.

The tone is calm and the mood changes from idyllic to disturbing at the end.

Myop is the protagonist of the story. There is no clear antagonist.

The major conflict is that of an innocent child exploring a world that could—and does—shatter that innocence..

The climax is Myop's discovery that the dead man was lynched.

Immediately before Myop makes her discovery of the corpse, the woods seem to grow dark and gloomy: "It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence close and deep."
This foreshadows her frightening discovery.

"Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself." Surprisingly, little Myop reacts rather calmly to her discovery of a corpse, though her mood shifts when she realizes that he was likely murdered.

The short story alludes to the sharecropping system, which became widespread in the South by the end of slavery, during and after Reconstruction.

See the separate "Imagery" section of this ClassicNote.

It is paradoxical that a pink rose—a symbol of life—flourishes in the circle made by the rotting remains of a noose—a symbol of death.

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