The Short Story Marigolds by Eugenia Collier
In the short story Marigolds by Eugenia Collier, a girl named Elizabeth and her family struggle through living in the time of the Great Depression. Elizabeth is an African American girl that is on the threshold of womanhood. Elizabeth’s family is very poor and is forced to live in a shantytown. Elizabeth and her family have to live through the struggle of poverty, poignant and meaningful arguments in the family, and Elizabeth is caught between the chaotic emotions of a child and a woman.
In “Marigolds,” Lizabeth’s childhood innocence starts as a thoughtless time in her life. The story begins with the main character remembering back to her childhood in a poverty stricken shantytown. Bored on a hot summer day, Lizabeth’s younger brother, Joey, suggests some childish fun to pass some time, ''Tell you what,’ said Joey finally, his eyes sparkling. ‘Let’s us go over to Miss Lottie’s.’ The idea caught on at once, for annoying Miss Lottie was always fun”. When they arrived at Miss Lottie's decaying old house, they plotted their plan of attack. Mrs. Lottie’s brightly colored marigolds which stood out in her barren yard. They all threw stones at the marigolds while Miss Lottie tended to them. All the children hated those colorful blossoms. “They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place; they were too beautiful; they said too much that we could not understand…”. Miss Lottie became upset with the children as they wildly laughed. Right after, Lizabeth feels guilty about throwing the pebbles at the flowers, but she didn't fully understand why she was having these feelings.
Later on in the story, Lizbeth overheard a conversation between her father and mother about their poverty, while her father was crying. Lizbeth began to remember so many things, she found herself getting angry and upset. She started to remember “the need for her mother who was never there, the hopelessness of her poverty and degradation, the bewilderment of being neither child nor woman and yet both at once, the fear unleashed by my father's tears. And these feelings combined in one great impulse toward destruction”. This explains why Lizbeth changed because she had just realized that her family is living in poverty. This drew her to destroy the only beautiful thing there had been at the moment, Mrs lotties marigolds. This represents Lizbeth's loss of innocence because she is seeing how the world around her really is. This shows how much she is growing into a woman by gaining experience to no longer be oblivious to the world around her, which is making her mature. Soon after she had just destroyed the marigolds, Lizbeth began to realize. In the text it says “ These years have put words to the things I knew at that moment, and as I look back upon it I know that that moment marked the end of innocence...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”. This shows that Lizbeth is realizing that she has changed, that she is not going to be the same person. This explains how Lizbeth has accepted that she had matured into a woman and is going to have to be responsible for her actions.
In Conclusion, the story “Marigolds” shows how Lizbeth's loss of innocence is represented through the destroyed marigolds and her journey from being naive to being mature.
