Synopsis Of The Short Story 'Marigolds' By Eugenia Collier

Marigolds
In this short story Marigolds by author Eugenia Collier the narrator, Lizabeth, has chosen to retell a story as an adult reflecting on a significant incident from her childhood. In this story the main character Lizabeth lives during the great depression and describes her experiences like when she says “the brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust” (paragraph 1). This describes the marigolds and there beauty against the brown, dry, and ugly ground that they had during this time. I also think they added this because they wanted to really make shore that the reader could really understand how much the marigolds stand out. During this time of age with Lizabeth her father was the leader in the home and I could tell that because

she says” my father the rock” (paragraph 42). When I read this I think of her saying how her father is the leader of the house and she knows that so she respects him. And before that she talks about her mother” My mother, who was a soft, was now the strength of the family” (Paragraph 42). In this she is saying that her mother was usually the one to come and tuck them in and give them kisses and be a soft loving person that takes orders from the husband and works off of his money, but not now because now she is the leader the only one that is making an income. Later that night her parents where fighting she had a mental fight with herself “I had indeed lost my mind, for all the smoldering emotions of that summer swelled in me and busted” (Paragraph 55). In this part of the paragraph Lizabeth is fighting all of her emotion and finally busted like she says, she could not hold it back any more like if you were to put Mentos in a coke bottle and close it the pressure will build up and sooner or later pop. When these emotions finally popped out she went to Miss Lottie’s and started to pull up the marigolds, “I leaped furiously into the mounds of marigolds and pulled madly, trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms” (Paragraph 57). In this crazy action of anger it says she was trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms. I just wanted to point out that it did not say just the yellow blooms but it said perfect yellow destroying. Emphasizing the perfect in that statement because she is still mad at how perfect and beautiful those flowers were to that ugly land.