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The Corpse and Skull
“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
The The Flowers quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Woods. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Flowers
Quotes
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.
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The Woods Symbol Timeline in The Flowers
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Woods appears in The Flowers. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Flowers
...pigs rooting along the banks, and bubbles on the water’s surface. As she walks into the woods , she thinks of her regular autumn walks with her mother to gather nuts. Today,...
(full context)
