One cause of the loss of innocence is traumatization.

Many stories have the main

character go through an emotionally disturbing event. In The Scarlet Ibis by James Hurst, the
main character and his family witness the death of the scarlet ibis. The main character asks
himself, How many miles had it traveled to die like this, in our yard, beneath the bleeding tree?
(2) In Marigolds, by Eugenia Collier, the main character, Elizabeth, described how her world
was changed by the Depression. Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a broken accordion,
(6) she says, describing how her new crazy world traumatized her. Her father, who was strong,
was now like a baby, and the mother, who was soft, became the person you could depend on. For
both of these characters, the sudden, emotional new event forced them to change and lose their
innocence as their world changed themselves.
To see the death of someone, to see the dead body without life, usually causes the
witness to change completely. The main characters in The Flowers, by Alice Walker and The
Scarlet Ibis, by James Hurst both changed by losing their world of innocence after seeing a dead
body. In The Scarlet Ibis, the main character lays there crying, sheltering my fallen ibis from
the heresy of rain. (3) That loss of his brother Doodle makes him realize the value of his brother
and lose his innocence after facing the harsh world. In The Flowers, by Alice Walker, Myop,
the main character, sees the rotting body of an African American man who was hanged. She
laid down her flowers. And her summer was over. (2) Because she saw the dead African
American, she lost her world of innocence and realized that her world was actually a world filled
with racism and violence towards African Americans. These two individuals, Myop and the
older brother, lost their innocence after seeing someone die.
Knowledge is known to be deadly, and in countless stories knowledge takes away the
innocence of the main character. Such is true for the main characters in The Flowers, by Alice
Walker, as well as Marigolds, by Eugenia Collier. In Marigolds, the main character,
Elizabeth, gazed upon a reality which is hidden to childhood. Childhood contains an innocence
that hides the reality of the harsh world that invisibly surrounds the child. The change from child
to woman, which Elizabeth herself experienced, can be the gaining of knowledge and the loss of
innocence. Elizabeth continues by saying innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things
at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface (7) Also, in The Flowers, Myop sees
a dead man and realizes that he was hanged only because he was an African American, by
discovering a rope that was frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzledbarely therebut spinning
restlessly in the breeze (2). That knowledge is beneficial is true, but it is also true that
knowledge causes the loss of innocence.