Farello, Lauren
Bartels, Nicole
Period 1
MARIGOLDS:
SHORT
STORY ANALYSIS
SUMMARY:
The crisis of Marigolds, by Eugenia Collier, is that Lizabeth, a 14 year old
African American girl, doesn’t know who she is.
The conflict of the story involves Lizabeth trying to find out who she
is while growing up in a poor
The story is told from a first
person point of view as told by Lizabeth.
The story shows the thoughts and feelings of the main character.
The conflicts of Marigolds are internal and
external. The internal conflict is
Lizabeth versus herself emotionally with innocence, compassion, growing up, and
accepting responsibility. The external
conflict involves Lizabeth and the poverty and rough times while growing
up.
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT:
Lizabeth’s character developed and
changed in several ways. In the
beginning of the story, Lizabeth was a young girl that spent time with the
young neighborhood children, causing trouble and having childish fun. She didn’t fully understand the difference
between right and wrong. “For some
perverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of
the place; they were too beautiful; they said too much about what we could not
understand; they did not make sense.” (Collier, page 79) The children taunt Miss Lottie, but do not
mean any harm; they are just innocently having a good time. When she angrily destroys Miss Lottie’s marigolds,
the only thing that the poor woman has, she is no longer the innocent child
that she used to be. In that moment, she
changes from a young carefree child to a woman that must take responsibility
for her destructive actions. When
Lizabeth saw the old lady’s look of sadness and pain, she finally realized what
a horrible thing she had done, and felt compassion toward Miss Lottie. “Whatever verve there was left in her,
whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had not been squeezed out by life, had been there in the marigolds she had so tenderly
cared for.” (Collier, page 84) Throughout the story, Lizabeth learns about
herself and grows into a woman, feels compassion towards another person, and takes
responsibility for her actions. Eugenia
Collier used both direct and indirect characterization to describe the
characters.
THEMES: