When adolescents transform into adults, they think of this transformation based solely on appearance, but it is actually how they transform emotionally as well which leads into their highly yearnful adulthood. In the short story “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, the protagonist Lizabeth recalls her poverty-stricken childhood and the major events she experiences that causes her to be able to become more mature. By Lizabeth maturing from an ignorant girl to a compassionate woman, she is able to grow an adultlike perspective on life and thus relay Collier’s message that there is always hope, even in hopeless situations. Some things take more than just a few glances to have its substance truly disclosed. By transforming into a full-grown person, Lizabeth learns to see things not only by what is on the outside, but grasp what is inside as well. Near the beginning of the story, she recalls one of her childhood days where she and her friends once again adventure off to annoy Ms. Lottie. Once there, however, they find that, “For some reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place; they said too much that we could not understand; they did not make sense” (Collier 26). Lizabeth and her thrill-seeking friends are bewildered by the beauty of the marigolds amongst Ms. Lottie’s barren land, causing them to despise it. This conveys the kids as being unable to grasp the true meaning behind the planted marigolds. By using the oxymoron “perfect ugliness” to describe Ms. Lottie’s surroundings, the interference of the “too beautiful” marigolds highlights its value and its symbolism as hope. The significance of this is that by employing the children’s ignorance of the marigolds, it is able to reveal their innocence. It shows how they aren’t yet able to perceive things beyond their surface, to be able to understand things beyond their literal definition like the marigolds. However, this is able to set up the transformation that occurs for Lizabeth to be able to lose her innocence and unveil the author’s argument. At the end of the story, she unleashes her pent-up feelings of the marigolds by destroying it, causing her childhood to vanish and adulthood to begin. As time passes by
The Up Series documents the lives of fourteen children in a longitudinal study. The filmmaker interviews these fourteen individuals every seven years to examine how their lives progress over time and to examine how their socioeconomic status affects their life. In this paper, Suzy will be examined from age 7 to age 56. Over the course of the Up Series, Suzy’s personality and priorities changed dramatically in almost all of the aspects of her life. From the small bits and pieces of her life that were captured and shown on the series, the course her life could have taken could have been much different. Her story shows that one life event can change the course of your whole life. In the end Suzy was the poster child of how one life event can change the rest of your life. She is not necessarily the poster child for wealth, prosperity and privilege that the series paint her to be. Initially, she was because that was the type of person the filmmaker wanted to portray her as. However, in the end, she was successful at portraying herself very differently. It took her many years to do so, but she was able to do it. By the end of the series, Suzy changed the way she portrays herself, and much of this change has to do with the life events she has experienced. She experienced being a resistant child and young adult on the series, losing a parent at a young age, finding a successful marriage and experiencing financial instability. All of these events happened at an age the made her grow
In “Marigolds” by Eugenia W. Collier, Lizabeth and the children view Miss Lottie as an ugly and unpleasant woman prior to the ultimate destruction of the marigolds, and Lizabeth’s understanding of Miss Lottie changes when she realizes the struggle and hard times, Miss Lottie has live through. In order to pass their time during summer, Lizabeth and the children hide in the bushes near Miss Lottie’s house to annoy her and have some fun, and when Miss Lottie spots them and tells them to go away, Lizabeth comes out of the bushes and chants (later joined by children), “Old witch, fell in a ditch, picked up a penny and thought she was rich!” (35). Calling Miss
Symbolism explains the theme of hope really well. In the story, Miss Lottie is an impoverished old woman who likes to plant marigolds in her lawn. These are not just any flowers, however, they have a much deeper meaning. To Miss Lottie, these marigolds provide a hope and beauty in her life: “Whatever . . . love and beauty and joy that had not been squeezed out by life, had been there in the marigolds she had so tenderly
A child holds innocence from a young age and does not understand the importance of having compassion. As a child's innocence gradually fades away due to maturity, he or she transforms into a compassionate person. In a coming of age short story called, “Marigolds,” the author Eugenia Collier writes about a series of events about a young girl, named Lizabeth, develops into a compassionate person. Lizabeth narrates these events in a flashback that involves the marigolds of her neighbor, Miss Lottie. Miss Lottie's marigolds represented the essence of hope in the midst of the town, filled with dust and dirt. Despite the dirt and dusty roads that were accompanied by the house, Miss Lottie decided to plant her marigolds. The effect of economic struggles the townspeople go through causes Lizabeth to destroy Miss Lottie's marigolds. Throughout the short story,
The garden is the vehicle in which the narrator reveals her reluctance to leave behind the imaginary world of childhood and see the realities of the adult world. The evidence supporting this interpretation is the imagery of hiding. The narrator uses the garden to hide from reality and the
The condition of Miss Lottie’s house represents how the Great Depression affects the nation because of the major downfalls of the economy. The Great Depression makes Miss Lottie’s house look like it is about to crumble, but even so Miss Lottie still at least has something to keep her and her house together--her marigolds. Moreover, though the Great Depression brings in negativity, the marigolds Miss Lottie plants are described as ”...strangest part of the picture... Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry gray house, rose suddenly and shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous mounds, warm and passionate and sun-golden.” (258-259). Miss Lottie and the town lives in a world where hope is limited, but the marigolds are the things that are beautiful in the town and in Miss Lottie’s eyes because they were hope. The marigolds certainly don’t fit in with the ugliness of the town because they shine brightly and bring hope to the town. The marigolds brings hope to the people in town and to Miss Lottie because the marigolds were the only things in the town which were warm, beautiful, and bright, unlike their gloomy town’s
The short stories “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst, and “Marigolds” by Eugenia W. Collier, are all meaningfully connected through peices and feelings that are felt while reading the stories. Each is unique, but they have the same point behind them. All three of the ‘main’ characters in these stories have all destroyed something. Rather it be important to them or someone else.
My mom planted her marigolds and helped me out with my problems with a person. She would be my “therapist,” my helper, the shoulder to cry on. When I would be sad, mad, upset, depressed, etc. she would be there for me and would comfort me when I needed her the most. When she “planted marigolds,” it symbolized care and hope that I will no longer be all those feelings I had before. My mom helped me out a lot and I am glad she did because I am joyful of her being there for me. Before my mom made me feel great again, I would not go anywhere with my friends nor go over to my relatives house or anything.
The story “Marigolds”, written by Eugenia Collier, is a story about a young woman who is just becoming an adult. She goes through many internal conflicts about whether she should do the mature thing, the adult thing, or the immature thing, which is what kids would do. The whole story is conveying the idea of adolescence and how people change from a kid to an adult. “Marigolds” tells the reader that one cannot have compassion along with innocence. The story generates a fine line between the innocence of being a kid and the compassion that comes with adulthood. There are many examples of this theme in the story, the first one being when the group of kids attacked the marigolds, the second being when Lizabeth overheard the conversation between her parents, and the third is after she destroyed the marigolds.
Do you remember of your childhood and can describe detail by detail everything? The author Eugenia Collier uses flashback, imagery, and diction to help create the voice of Lizbeth. This story was written as a flashback because Lizbeth the main character was remembering all and telling it. She explained some of the things in detail and used a lot of wording too. In all the story Lizbeth used literary elements.
Throughout the story “Marigolds” written by Eugenia Collier, the main character Lizabeth who is faced with poverty while experiencing life in the Great Depression faces many conflicts. This results in Lizabeth having a dramatic change throughout the story. My first point is that Lizabeth can be described as childish and bothered in the beginning of the story. As evidence, line 180-181 state “We had to annoy her by whizzing pebbles into her flowers.”
There are a myriad beautiful types of flowers in our lives today that are great for gardeners, but in the United States, one of the easiest to recognize ends up being marigolds. There are more than 50 different species of this type of flower that are all taxonomies by botany into what is known as the Tagetes genus.
Closing out the short story, Eugenia Collier’s use of imagery in paragraph 24 conveys the image of Miss Lottie’s home as “ ...crumbling decay...“. After the crash of the stock market, Americans felt as if their life was “crumbling” apart. They lost their homes, livelihood, their families, and a majority of everything they ever obtained in life. In addition to describing Miss Lottie's little home, Collier also conveys the image of “...warm and passionate and sun-golden” marigolds. The marigolds represent the sliver of hope that many Americans needed during the Great Depression, the darkest time of their lives: She further describes the flowers as “... too beautiful…”
In this text I will be telling you about the marigolds. Once a few years ago a young girl lived in a small neighborhood when she was young and her and her friends used to hide in bushes and mess with Miss.Lottie. Lizabeth mother was never home because she was working. Her father was unemployed. The little girl was in her bed and she couldn’t sleep so she woke her brother up and put on some clothes and left. When she got outside she ran for a little while and she ran over to Miss.Lottie’s garden and tore them out the ground
The knight loaded the bow directed at her heart. She closed her eyes scared to open them, scared to see the arrow lodge its self in her chest. She took her final breath......