How is the theme of discovery conveyed throughout the text?

Walker uses carefully-chosen language and symbolism to convey the theme of discovery in this short story. Her protagonist, Myop, has a name which connotes short-sightedness or myopia and, accordingly, at the beginning of the story, her perspective is very limited. Walker vividly conveys the smallness of Myop's world, restricted as it is to the "tat-de-ta-ta-ta" of her stick rattling, a world beyond which "nothing existed."
It is by contrast to this limited world that Myop's discovery seems greater. As she strays beyond her usual boundaries, she experiences a "strangeness" and a "deep" silence. Both these words suggest the unknown or the unexplored, and accordingly Myop is frightened, trying to "circle back to the house." As she senses a discovery from her surroundings, she tries to back away from it, returning symbolically to innocence.
It is, however, too late. She steps "smack" into the corpse of the lynched sharecropper, who is described in vivid detail—indicating the level of detail Myop perceives. No longer myopic, she takes in everything about this man: words like "interest" and "noticed" indicate that she is no longer someone content to exist in a small world. Indeed, she is no longer able to. At the end of the story, Myop lays down her flowers—the flowers which represent her innocence and youth—and "the summer" of her childhood is "over." At this juncture, there is no returning to a world of inexperience.

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.