There Were No Marigolds In Pecola's Baby

“ She appeared to have fainted… she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy guilt, trying to connect the pain.. with the face of her mother looking over her.” (161)

Thus we see that Pecola eventually gets pregnant by her father, but later on delivers a premature child who eventually dies. At the end the baby dies, Cholly Breedlove dies and the innocence of the girls is also dead.

Claudia reminicizes that their marigold seeds had not sprouted because- “we had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt.”(fragment 2)

Claudia felt the need that someone should want the baby to live. Since the adults will not consider the circumstances, as such Pecola ' s innocence is destroyed. The girls had planned to save Pecola not by direct intervention but rather indirectly planting flower seeds in their backyard. They feel that if the seeds sprout, then everything will turn out fine and Pecola ' s baby will live. Unfortunately, "there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941" (fragment 2) and Pecola 's baby dies shortly after birth. The baby 's death symbolizes Pecola 's loss of future which is apparent in her descent into madness.

The damage done was total. She spent her days, her tendril, sap-green days, walking up and down, up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear. Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal,