Innocence is something that we always expect to be lost sooner or later in life, an inevitable event that comes from growing up and realizing the world for what we it really is. “The Flowers” ​​by Alice Walker portrays an event in which a ten-year-old girl loses her innocence after revealing a relatively shocking fact towards the end of the story. Set in post-war America, the literary piece contains very particular fragments of images and symbolism that describe the final maturation of Myop, the young female protagonist of the story. In “The Flowers” ​​by Alice Walker, the literary elements of imagery, symbolism, and setting “The Flowers” ​​help create a reasonably surprising reveal of the gruesome ending, as well as conveying the theme of how innocence disappears as a result . to face the harsh reality of this world. Walker uses the positive imagery of “The Flowers” ​​at the beginning of the novel to create a naive and sweet world in which the gruesome appearance of the lynched victim turns into a reasonably unexpected shock. event that deprives Myop of his innocence. The first half of the text focuses on Myop's childhood innocence with gentle kinesthetic images of Myop feeling "nice and warm in the sun" to specifically target Myop's childhood inhibitions. In the same case, sweet and gentle visual images continue to play in the first paragraphs of a happy agricultural lifestyle where “every day a golden surprise” and a ten-year-old girl like Myop could “jump lightly from her house to the pigsty ” and bouncing “hither and thither”. The joyful clapping of Myop's cane going "tat-de-ta-ta-ta" allows the auditory images to play on a cheerful sort of onomatopoeia that fits strongly with Myop's innocence. The images had little direct setup… middle of the paper… or anticipation for an ending that leads to the loss of innocence in the face of harsh reality after the Civil War. While imagery and symbolism do little to help set up an expected ending in Alice Walker's “The Flowers,” the setting is the singular element that clearly motivates an ending that correlates to the overriding theme of how innocence it disappears following the confrontation with a dark realism of the cruel world. Despite the joyful atmosphere of a seemingly beautiful world, rich in corn and cotton, death and hatred lurk in the woods just beyond the sharecropper's hut. Myop's flowers are laid as he blossoms into maturity before his fallen kin, and summer life dies along with his innocence. Grim realism has never been so cruel to innocent children. Works CitedWalker Alice. Ed. Edoardo Proffitt. NY: Harcourt, 1988