Legend

The sea daisies that Day finds for Mom symbolize Day’s love for his family—and his powerlessness to protect them. Day finds them growing in a crack in a high-rise apartment, and knowing that they’re Mom’s favorite flower, he picks them and takes them with him when he visits his family’s home that night. But because it’s essential that Day let Mom believe he’s dead, he isn’t able to give the flowers to her. Instead, he leaves them under the house, where the flowers wither and die over a few days.

Just as the flowers are an unseen token of Day’s love for Mom, Day’s help—and indeed, the fact that he’s still alive—remains unknown and unseen to everyone in the family except John. Day later notices the dead sea daisies when he goes home to try to protect Mom, Eden, and John from the plague patrols and the military. At that point, they foreshadow Day’s inability to protect his family members, as he’s just one person facing off against a huge and powerful military. And indeed, just as the flowers have no hope of surviving under the house, Day is powerless to protect his family against the oppressive government: ultimately, Thomas shoots Mom and arrests John and Day, and medics take Eden away.