Marigolds By Eugenia Collier Analysis

It seems that no matter the year, the way people grow and learn never really changes. In the story Marigolds, set during the 1930s, you follow 14-year-old "Lizabeth" as she grows and matures into a young adult. In The Whistle, by Anne Estevis, you follow Chatita as she learns a valuable lesson in owning up to mistakes and resolving issues. In addition, the poems Hanging Fire and Teenagers both give different perspectives to the same issue teenagers face, despite the fact that the authors had experienced their teenage years in the 1940s-1950s. In the story Marigolds by Eugenia Collier, you read a familiar story about a teenaged girl in an unfamiliar setting, an impoverished community during the Great Depression. Marigolds has themes about growing up, maturing and the pure innocence

It's also made clear in the story that the attitude of a child remains unchanged, "After our few chores around the tumbledown shanty, Joey and I were free to run wild..." (Collier 215). Children now still have little work and lots of time, leaving the hard work to the adults. Being a teenager seems to be left unchanged as well, "Whenever a memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind... I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence... Joy and rage and wild animal gladness and shame become tangled together..." (Collier 214). According to the article, "What the Brain Says about Maturity" by Laurence Steinberg, Teenagers today face the same chaos of emotions due to slower development rates. Marigolds' main character, Lizabeth, is 14 years old and is living in a black community during the great depression, in the heart of segregation and poverty. It says in the story, "We children, of course, were only vaguely aware of the extent of our poverty... we were somewhat unaware of the world outside our community... poverty was a cage in which we all were trapped..." (Collier 214). This gets across the message that children