How is the theme of discovery conveyed throughout the text?

In Alice Walker's short story "The Flowers," a young girl named Myop makes a horrific discovery: she finds the body of a man who was lynched. This marks a turning point in her life, as she is no longer a carefree, innocent girl and has now become aware of the dangers and the racism of the American South.

"The Flowers" begins with Myop enjoying the outdoors, running around her family's property carelessly and singing to...

In Alice Walker's short story "The Flowers," a young girl named Myop makes a horrific discovery: she finds the body of a man who was lynched. This marks a turning point in her life, as she is no longer a carefree, innocent girl and has now become aware of the dangers and the racism of the American South.

"The Flowers" begins with Myop enjoying the outdoors, running around her family's property carelessly and singing to herself. We learn that her family are sharecroppers, which was a fairly common position for African Americans in the South during the decades after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Alice Walker includes that detail to hint at the context of Myop's childhood; she is unaware at the beginning of the story, but her family is poor and has to work hard for not much profit. As African Americans, they also face the racism that persists in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War. The character's name also indicates her shortsighted nature (she is "myopic"). 

At the end of the story, Myop travels farther from home than usual and stumbles upon a decaying corpse wearing overalls. The man was a sharecropper, and the rope around his neck indicates that he was lynched. This discovery makes Myop aware of the dangers, the violence, and the extreme prejudice of the world around her. As Walker's last line notes, "And the summer was over." The summer represents the innocence of Myop's childhood and her carefree, limited perspective.