There is beauty in life for those who choose to see it. The Marigold is a story that is about the time of the Great Depression and how people were growing up in poverty with no shoes, little to no clothing, and barely a roof over their heads literally.The theme is see the good in little things for those that do see it. The marigolds were a symbol of beauty in all of the ugliness that was around them but at the time Elizabeth could not see it until it was too late. The title of the book is Marigolds short story by Eugenia Collier and is historical fiction. The first theme would be don't judge a book by it's cover, this is because they assumed that Ms. Lottie just had the flowers just because they looked good, not knowing they had a significance and a meaning to her, everyone just thought because she had some pretty flowers in her yard they …show more content…
Lottie’s flowers were also a symbol of beauty to all of the ugliness around her it helped her believe that there was hope and even though everything was ugly around them something could be beautiful. But at the time Elizabeth could not see that she didn't understand the meaning until it was too late and they had been destroyed. On page 223-24 lines 362-54 she was telling us the meaning of the flowers and how she now knew why Ms. Lottie kept them in her yard against all of the ugliness. In the story the author what the author said about the marigolds she destroyed and what they meant to Ms. Lottie. The author said,” Whatever verve was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had not been squeezed out by life, had been there in the marigolds she had so tenderly cared for.” So atlast she finally realised she understood what and why she had the marigolds in her yard even though by now it was too late because she had destroyed all of the beauty that was left in in those horrible
“Marigolds” by Eugenia W.Collier , has an inspiring theme ,one act can change your thinking towards the world . “I recall that devastating moment when I was suddenly more women than child “ (Collier 142) . In that moment, the main character made a bad decision which led her to become more mature and understood the actual reality that she was in . “ I gazed upon a kind of reality which is hidden to childhood” (Collier 148) . This action caused the character to realize how much of her innocence was truly taken away when she started to act more mature .
To release all the emotions Lizabeth was feeling she ran to Miss Lottie’s shack and “leaped into the mounds of marigolds and pulled madly…” ruining the flowers (Collier 12). Lizabeth was overwhelmed and had to take out her anger somewhere and she chose the marigolds because they were the only things that were perfect. Lizabeth’s life was out of order and she had no one to comfort her though when Miss Lottie came out, she finally understood what those marigolds meant and what her actions had caused. The marigolds symbolize hope and as Lizabeth destroyed them, she was destroying Miss Lottie’s hope and her own.
Empathy and compassion are cycled by humans in response to another’s emotions, suffering, and misfortune. They are what further one’s understanding of a relative homosapien. The Southern Gothic Fiction, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, pays tribute to both empathy and compassion in its telling of a young girl’s coming-of-age and probing how racism, prejudice, or in other words evil and morality coexist within a community. Furthermore, in the short fiction crisis, “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, Lizabeth, a fourteen-year-old African American girl in Maryland, struggles to find herself in the midst of adolescence and economic calamity, the Great Depression. Overall, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird best elicits compassion and
Since the story is told from the perspective of Lizabeth, she narrates the conflict and blames Miss Lottie and her flowers. She describes the inexplicable hatred she feels towards the flowers and Miss Lottie’s tenderness towards them. Lizabeth narrates, “For some perverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place; they were too beautiful; they said too much that we could not understand; they did not make sense. There was something in the vigor with which the old woman destroyed the weeds that intimidated us”.
The theme is developed by how Jeannette learns how to take care of herself and her younger siblings, and the way her parent taught her. Jeannette have a very tough childhood where she have to go up quickly,so that she can work to make money. This way she won’t starve and feel the chill of winter, where there’s no heat in the house. She can also break ties with the move and rent new house to find new money sources because her dad can’t hold a job for a long
Myops theme is the loss of innocence, which she loses at the end when she leaves her flowers with the dead man. She lost her innocence because she was ten-years-old and came across a harsh death, which her flowers could represent. She lays down the flowers, her innocence, and leaves it behind in the gloomy area that she came upon. Connies theme on the other hand is being taken from childhood to adulthood. She is taken from a place that she knows and introduced to a more harsher reality.
To me the best theme in the story is friendship. I believe that every person needs to show friendship to
In “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier the coming of age short story where a now grown up Lizabeth reminisce her childhood especially going into Ms.Lottie’s garden. Ms. Lottie, who did not like children but treated her precious marigolds gets them destroyed by Lizabeth. After destroying them, Lizabeth realizes her errors believing she became a women in that moment. This short story has several literary device that are used in it to help deepen the meaning. The use of imagery, symbolism and metaphors in “Marigolds” helps the reader that it is important to not lose
The marigolds symbolized her childhood and innocence, which were deeply treasured. Once Lizabeth destroyed the marigolds, she was no longer a child. In lines 134-137, she remarked, “For as I gazed at the immobile face with the sad, weary eyes, I gazed upon a kind of reality that is hidden to childhood. The witch was no longer a witch but only a broken old woman who had dared to create beauty in the midst of ugliness and sterility.” As a child, Lizabeth had childishly saw her as a witch who strangely wanted to grow beautiful marigolds during a terrible time, but she realized that Miss Lottie just wanted to create happiness for herself and anyone that happened to pass by and look at her marigolds.
The author uses the marigolds as a symbol but, their meaning varies between each character. To a young Lizabeth , the marigolds symbolise beauty in a place that it doesn't belong. These beautiful flowers anger a young Lizabeth because she thinks they didn’t belong in the old dusty town she grew up in. To an adult Lizabeth these flowers hold a different meaning, they now represent hope to her. These flowers hold a different meaning to Miss Lottie, to her they represented what was left of love, hope, and beauty in her life.
Alice Walker uses imagery and diction throughout her short story to tell the reader the meaning of “The Flowers”. The meaning of innocence lost and people growing up being changed by the harshness of reality. The author is able to use the imagery to show the difference between innocence and the loss of it. The setting is also used to show this as well.
In the story “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier there is a lot of imagery and diction. The imagery was mainly focused on how the town looks and the contrast between the town and Miss Lottie’s house. In the text is states how that the only beautiful part of the house is the marigolds, “Miss Lottie's marigolds were perhaps the strangest part of the picture. Certainly they did not fit in with the crumbling decay of the rest of her yard”(Collier 23). This quote is trying to say that her house was a very old house that no one really cared for but, the marigolds were always taken care of and that was the only beauty in the whole yard.
These images show Wordsworth’s relationship with nature because he personifies this flower allowing him to relate it and become one with nature.
Throughout the story, it is made abundantly clear that Paul maintains, “a shuddering repulsion for the flavorless, colourless mass of every-day existence,” and holds a particular interest for, “cool things and soft lights and fresh flowers,” (Paul’s Case, 474). Paul wants to distance himself from the drab normalcy of the culture he is surrounded by, and instead, find solace in natural beauty--like that of flowers. The symbolic nature of Paul’s admiration for flowers is distributed all throughout the story, from the opening paragraph to the tragic
That is one way the theme can be related to the text, but another interpretation is how Blanche appears to be sane. In reality, she has trauma related mental problems that become apparent throughout the text. The author tries to portray the character’s lives different then what is actually going on in their private lives. Symbolism is used in the play by Blanche’s “fancy and expensive” items. These possessions from Blanche’s perspective look new and expensive, but they actually are worn out and cheap from the outsider’s view.