Analysis Of Marigolds By Eugenia Collier

Marigolds by Eugenia Collier is a short story about a black woman named Lizabeth who often thinks about her childhood, growing up in a small shanty town. This story takes place during the Great Depression and tackles the circumstances of living in poverty, dealing with financial issues, and having to grow up. The main protagonist, Lizabeth, struggles to endure the hardships of becoming an adult. As Lizabeth grows up, she sees her dad cry for the first time and realizes the reality that adults can be vulnerable and are capable of feeling sad. In the backyard of the town outcast, there also laid hopeful and vibrant Marigolds. The flowers were taken care of by Miss Lottie, an elderly black woman who devoted all of her time to the precious plants …show more content…
This is the theme of the story because Lizabeth and her older siblings became compassionate as they grew up and lost their innocence. A person cannot be empathetic yet naive about their world; it is simply not possible. If a person is aware and sympathetic about the problems present in the world, they are not ignorant and innocent. One must be either innocent or compassionate, and this book suggests that we all are born innocent until we grow up and become sympathetic. In the second paragraph of page 167 it said “Of course I could not express the things that I knew about Miss Lottie as I stood there awkward and ashamed. The years have put words to the things I knew in that moment, and as I look back upon it, I know that that moment marked the end of innocence. Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.” This part of the story tells readers that the day Lizabeth unleashed her anger out on Miss Lottie’s marigolds, she lost all her innocence. Later on in the paragraph it was written “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have both compassion and innocence.” The end of the second paragraph on page 167 made it clear to readers that a person cannot obtain the qualities of …show more content…
On the 2nd paragraph of page 167 it explained “Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.” This quote from the text means that if one is innocent they only see things for what they seem to be and they do not bother to look deeper into the meaning of things. When people are younger, they are unaware of what is happening in reality. On page 158, the second paragraph it says “We children, of course, were only vaguely aware of the extent of our poverty. Having no radios, few newspapers, and no magazines, we were somewhat unaware of the world outside our community.” It also stated in the paragraph “Poverty was the cage in which we all were trapped, and our hatred of it was still the vague, undirected restlessness of the zoo-bred flamingo who knows that nature created him to fly free.” These two parts from the second paragraph in page 158 show that the children in the story are unaware of how poor they truly are. The children in this story don’t understand that not having money and living in poverty can degrade the quality of your life substantially and what a serious issue it is. As a child, Lizabeth was part of the clueless population that was oblivious to the issues in life that they faced. However, the night that Lizabeth heard her dad cry for the first