Figurative Language In Marigolds By Eugenia Collier

Jacob Herrera

Ms. Ahn

English 1 Honors period 1

30/1/2023 Title of Your Essay

Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another.” – Alfred Adler. This illustrated well In the story “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, tells the story of Lizabeth, a 14 year old girl who attacks an old lady named Miss Lottie with a group of kids which causes an inner conflict which leads to her gaining empathy for Miss Lottie. To make us feel empathy, Eugenia Collier uses many forms of figurative language like similes, metaphors and most importantly, many symbols that give the story much more meaning. Miss Lottie is a great example of this. In the text, Miss Lottie has a deeper meaning and symbolizes compassion. In paragraph 63, Lizabeth explains that after she destroyed the marigolds and saw Miss Lottie “[That] was the beginning of compassion”.Using that evidence, the audience can see that seeing Miss Lottie made Lizabeth feel compassion as instead of a witch, Lizabeth now saw hopeless and broken old lady.Lizabeth

Throughout the story, Eugenia Collier uses figurative language to show the emotion that we should have towards these two symbols.She uses words like “warm”(Collier 8), “passionate”(Collier 8), and “sun golden”(Collier 8) to describe the marigolds like the hope people have in life, while she uses words like “haunted”(Collier 12), and a “ramshackle”(Collier 7) are used to describe Miss Lottie's house. The audience can then interpret how the marigolds stand for the warm, passionate hope people have in life. Therefore, the place where these marigolds are found, stands for the hopelessness that many characters in the story and in real life go through. This can obviously create empathy in the reader by showing how beautiful, warm and passionate hope can still bloom in