Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Theme of marigolds
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
'Marigolds' is a story written by the author Eugenia Collier. It is considered a 'coming of age story.' A coming of age story is a story where the protagonist becomes an adult through experiences, knowledge, or an adventure. Throughout the story the main character, Lizabeth, goes through experiences that upset her. These experiences teach her to have compassion and not to be afraid of hope and beauty. 'For all the smoldering emotions of that summer swelled up in me and burst-the great need for my mother who was never there, the hopelessness of our poverty and degradation, the bewilderment of being neither child nor woman and both at once, the fear unleashed by my father's tears.' This quote from the story explains what was troubling Lizabeth. As a child her mother wasn't around often...
After reading and annotating Marigolds by Eugenia W. Collier, I learned that there are some things we don’t know or realize when we are a child. When we become a woman, we have a different perspective on things. That is what Eugenia learned by the end of the story. Once she ruined all of Miss Lottie’s marigolds, she immediately felt guilty. Miss Lottie stood there with no anger on her face, just disappointment. Eugenia said that was when she saw her childhood fade and womanhood start to begin. Once she began womanhood, she learned that those flowers were precious to Miss Lottie and she was tying to make some beauty out of her shanty house. She viewed Miss Lottie as “… only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness
In the beginning, the author explains how this young girl, Lizabeth, lived in the culturally deprived neighborhood during the depression. Lizabeth is at the age where she is just beginning to become a young woman and is almost ready to give up her childish ways. Through this time period, she was confused and could not quite understand what was happening to her. In the end, she rips Miss Lottie’s marigolds among the ugly places in which she lived. The marigolds are the only things that make the place a bit beautiful to the eye.
In the short story, “Marigolds”, by Eugenia Collier a 14 year old girl, named Lizabeth, lives in a shanty-town in rural Maryland during the Great Depression. Because she lives in such poverty, she doesn’t have much to look forward to. Although it may seem a little early, Lizabeth is forced to grow up because she can’t afford to act like a child. Eugenia Collier shows that Lizabeth is forced to grow up because of poverty and racism.
Guy de Maupassant’s Mathilde Loisel and Eugenia Collier’s Lizabeth are two characters enduring what they perceive to be an abject state of existence. In Maupassant’s narrative, “The Necklace,” Loisel longs for material things she cannot have. In a similar way, Lizabeth, the protagonist of Eugenia Collier’s “Marigolds,” perceives her own life in the shantytowns of Maryland as dreary and dull. Despite their different character traits and backgrounds, Collier’s and Maupassant’s characters have similarly negative perspectives towards their own lives that greatly influence their actions and consequently, the outcome of the story.
It states that Lizabeth changed from a child to an adult in one instant, as she gazed on the sad, weary eyes of Miss. Lottie. Collier’s message is conveyed through the journey of Lizabeth. If Lizabeth undergoes the difficult journey to reach womanhood, Collier is trying to tell the reader that this is imperative for us to do so as well. One can only escape the blindness of ignorance that is accompanied by childhood best described as a “reality hidden to childhood.” on line 356, by undergoing the same journey that Lizabeth went through. Collier’s theme in “Marigolds” is that growing up is the only way in which to be able to comprehend someone other than yourself and feel compassion. Even though our situations are different the situation Lizabeth was placed in, we can still use what Lizabeth learned to help and improve our own lives.
It is the first time that Lizabeth hears a man cry. She could not believe herself because her father is “a strong man who could whisk a child upon his shoulders and go singing through the house.” As the centre of the family and a hero in her heart, Lizabeth’s dad is “sobbing like the tiniest child”She discovers that her parents are not as powerful or stable as she thought they were. The feeling of powerlessness and fear surges within her as she loses the perfect relying on her dad. She says, “the world had lost its boundary lines.” the “smoldering emotions” and “fear unleashed by my father’s tears” had “combined in one great impulse toward
I'll be honest; I picked this short story first because of the bright, blooming title, "Marigolds." But when I read the story, I felt torn, like the marigolds that were when destroyed by Lizabeth[ADM2]. Throughout this story I felt overwhelmed with reality;[ADM3] I was showered with confusion, contradictions, and it seems as though I read this story of harsh truth in a dream. Lizabeth's character is so close to myself, yet so far away, that I detest her, especially for her furious outrage taken out on a sliver of hope surrounded by despondency, yet I feel compassionate towards her.[ADM4]
Lizabeth and her family lived in a rundown shack out in the middle of nowhere. The land was dry, and not many of the natives made a sufficient amount of money. However, this did not stop Mrs. Lottie to plant beautiful golden marigolds. And something I found ironic was that Mrs. Lottie lived in what seemed like even worse conditions that everyone else, but she was the one that found something beautiful. The author portrayed her as an old haggard woman that was rude to anyone and everyone, but I think the author did this to show that everyone focused on that and didn't really look further to see what made her that way. I believe that there is a lot of ugly in this world, and there will always be. However, this story shows that sometimes we just focus on the ugly and don't take time to appreciate our
As a small child, about two years old, Lizzie's mother died. Her father, Andrew, married again. Lizzie did not like her stepmother even though she did not really remember her real mother at all. She never really accepted her stepmother as the person who raised her. And then one afternoon they were robber sunk in the house a...
Eugenia Collier’s “Marigolds” is a memoir of a colored girl living in the Great Depression. The story does not focus on the troubles society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), but rather is focused on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from childhood to adulthood cause fear in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope.
The daughter alludes to an idea that her mother was also judged harshly and made to feel ashamed. By the daughters ability to see through her mothers flaws and recognize that she was as wounded as the child was, there is sense of freedom for both when the daughter find her true self. Line such as “your nightmare of weakness,” and I learned from you to define myself through your denials,” present the idea that the mother was never able to defeat those that held her captive or she denied her chance to break free. The daughter moments of personal epiphany is a victory with the mother because it breaks a chain of self-loathing or hatred. There is pride and love for the women they truly were and is to be celebrated for mother and daughter.
The poem “Those Winter Sundays” displays a past relationship between a child and his father. Hayden makes use of past tense phrases such as “I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking” (6) to show the readers that the child is remembering certain events that took place in the past. Although the child’s father did not openly express his love towards him when he was growing up, the child now feels a great amount of guilt for never thanking his father for all the things he actually did for him and his family. This poem proves that love can come in more than one form, and it is not always a completely obvious act.
Although imagery and symbolism does little to help prepare an expected ending in “The Flowers” by Alice Walker, setting is the singular element that clearly reasons out an ending that correlates with the predominant theme of how innocence disappears as a result of facing a grim realism from the cruel world. Despite the joyous atmosphere of an apparently beautiful world of abundant corn and cotton, death and hatred lies on in the woods just beyond the sharecropper cabin. Myop’s flowers are laid down as she blooms into maturity in the face of her fallen kinsman, and the life of summer dies along with her innocence. Grim realism has never been so cruel to the innocent children.
The Narrator’s family treats her like a monster by resenting and neglecting her, faking her death, and locking her in her room all day. The Narrator’s family resents her, proof of this is found when the Narrator states “[My mother] came and went as quickly as she could.
The cry for help was not heard. Emily came up with so many excuses to spend some quality time with her mother and they were not acknowledged. “Can’t you go some other time, Mommy, like tomorrow?”(Pg.225) Emily’s mother was young herself and had a rough raising did not know the signs of asking for help.