Short Story Marigolds By E. Collier

The short story “Marigolds” by E. Collier is a story about a girl who becomes a woman after she destroys Mrs. Lottie’s Marigolds. She is still ignorant about her situation in life until she hears her father crying because of the Great Depression. She and her family lives in a minuscule town in rural Maryland in 1930. She is still a girl that likes to play with the children in the town and all of the children despise Mrs. Lottie’s Marigolds because of its perfect beauty in the shanty town.
Lisabeth and her brother Joey decide to pick at some locusts in the town, but they already have done most of the fun things because while their parents are at work, they play with the kids in the town and have fun with their free time. The children all decide to destroy Mrs. Lottie’s flowers. Mrs.

Lottie’s Marigolds are incongruous with the perfect plainness of the whole town.

She is working in her yard and some of the kids throw rocks and decapitate some of the Marigolds. Lisabeth enjoys messing with Mrs. Lottie, but deep down inside she is riding the fence with her emotions. She feels bad for what she is doing according to the quote. “I did not join the merriment when the kids gathered again under the oak in our bare yard. Suddenly I was ashamed, and I did not like being ashamed. The child in me sulked and said it was all in fun, but the woman in me flinched at the thought of the malicious attack that I had led (34).” She is feeling both ways. After she goes to bed she awakens to hear her father crying. All of her anger towards life, her mother working all the time, being in between a woman and a child, and the poverty that her family is

trapped in. All of these feeling lead to destruction which was unleashed when she heard her father crying. After waking up Joey she runs to Mrs. Lottie’s house and destroys all of the Marigolds. “I leaped furiously into the mounds of marigolds and pulled madly, trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms.(57).” When all is done she looks up and sees Mrs. Lottie. Mrs. Lottie is calm and motionless. This was the moment that she became a woman and faded out of her childhood.

Lisabeth at the end of the story is much older and wiser. She quotes “And I too have planted marigolds.(62).” She means that she has also tried to make beauty in the most unimaginable places. Lisabeth ends her innocence after destroying Mrs. Lottie’s Marigolds. Eugenie Collier ends the story with “For one does not have to be ignorant and poor to find that his life is as barren as the dusty yards of our town.(62).” She ends this line with I have planted Marigolds making the ending on a positive note.