“The Flowers” draws on a powerful cultural symbol to represent the woods as a space where Myop loses her innocence and becomes aware of evil. In American culture, the woods frequently symbolize a forbidden space associated with social taboos, knowledge of evil, and unsettling transformations. Girls and women often center in these stories and in history, from Little Red Riding Hood’s journey to see her grandmother to the wrongly accused Salem witches who were charged with practicing magic in the Salem woods. Read against this cultural backdrop, Myop’s journey into the woods can be viewed as a journey from innocence to experience and from safety to violence. The story adapts this common story to depict a symbolic moment for Black American children who inherit the cultural traumas of the American past.
The Woods Quotes in The Flowers
She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes.
The Woods Symbol Timeline in The Flowers
