Summary Of Marigolds By Eugenia W. Collier

Shirley Conran states, “Loss of innocence comes when you have to deal with the real world by yourself, when you learn that the first rule of life is kill or be killed.” In the story, Marigolds by Eugenia W. Collier shows the innocence of a child (Lizabeth) and how she becomes mature through sympathy. In the story, Lizabeth begins to realize the struggles of her community when she and her brother, Joey, left their childhood home at a young age. They left to find early marriage, but instead saw the truth about their community. In Marigolds, the author uses imagery to show maturity, poverty, and the loss of innocence. Lizabeth shows maturity through imagery when she begins to realize the wrongdoings of her past. Lizabeth starts getting memories of

Lizabeth conveys how she felt trapped because of the poverty she and her family had to deal with. However, because she and her brother were kids at the time, they didn’t know the extent of their poverty. As she states, “We children, of course, are only vaguely aware of the extent of our poverty. Having no radios, few newspapers, and no magazines, we were somewhat unaware of the world outside our community” (Collier 2). This shows how, because of their lack of things, they didn’t exactly know what was going on outside of their community. With the lack of knowledge from the community at the time Lizabeth was a child, it describes why she was ignorant to Miss Lottie and regrets that deeply, which connects back to her maturing through how she describes poverty during the Great Depression. Lizabeth portrays how she loses her innocence because of what happened to Miss. Lottie through the imagery. She recalls the memory of her cutting Miss. Lottie’s marigolds and remembers them as “marking the end of her