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Marigolds
literary Focus
.Conlll.kt: iaatdes Within and
Without
Conflict, or struggle, is the heart of a
story. When characters struggle against
something outside themselves, their
conflicts are externai. Characters with
interna~ conflicts struggle to resolve
contradictory desires or to battle personal problems, such as fear, shyness, or
anger, The most intense conflicts take
place when characters face battles both
within and without.
"Marigolds" includes a violent external
confrontation, but important conflicts
also take place in the mind and heart of
Lizabeth, who is battlin.g her own private
monsters.
Reading Skms :?t
Makil'lg ~nferences About
Motivation
'
Pages 118-126
cover
Rea«lliirmg
St.inu<lar<ll 3.3
Analyze
interactions
between
characters
(e.g., internal
and external
conflicts,
motivations) and
explain the
way those
interactions
affect the plot.
····'
118
\IY,he.o-you think about why conflicts occur
and why characters behave as they do, you
are trying to determine their motivation,
the reasons for their actions. Often writers don't make direct statements about
their characters. Instead, they expect you
to make inferences, or educated guesses,
based on clues in the text, such as a character's actions and words. As you read
"Marigolds," think about the characters'
motivations, especially motivations that
cause conflicts. The questions at the openbook signs will help you.
Make the Connection
Quickwl'ite
tf
This story is about the passage from childhood .to adulthood, a passage that is usually marked by conflict. In fact, negotiating
@jM!iMfj
the passage to adulthood can demand as
much courage as a struggle with an outside enemy. Before you read this story,
write down your response to the following question: What fears and conflicts do
most young people have to deal with as
they move into adult life? Keep your
notes for use later on.
Background
In the 1930s, a terrible economic depression swept the world. The booming stock
market had collapsed in 1929, causing
businesses to shut down all over America
and factories to close their doors. Banks
failed. People lost their life savings. Life
was hard for almost every American during those years, As the narrator of this
story says, however, the Great Depression was nothing new to her family: For
the black families of rural Maryland, all
times were hard times.
Vocalbuiary Deveiopment
arid (ar'id) adj.: lacking enough water for
many types of plants to grow; dry.
futile (fyoot''I) adj.: useless; vain.
impoverished (im·pav'ar·ishd) v. used
as adj.: poor; poverty-stricken.
poignantly (pcrin'yant ·le) adv.: with a
sharp sadness or pain; movingly.
darity (klar'a·te) n.: clearness.
pladdiy (plas'id ·le) adv.: calmly; quietly.
inciting (in· sit'i~) v. used as n.: stirring up.
malicious (ma· lish'as) adj.: showing a
desire to harm another; spiteful.
contrition (kan ·trish'en) n.: deep
feelings of guilt and repentance.
Character • Using Primary and Secondary Sources
: •;·.·
. .. .
. '·. -:- .
'
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I
'•'
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--
-~-:
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. ·... .f.·_ .. - .
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Eugenia W. Collier
...
fJ!liss Lottie didn't like intrudelf1ll; especlailiy children .
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The Magic Garden ( 1978) by Romare Bearden. Watercolor and collage (I OY," X ?'').
Mafigorci's
11 s
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·,.··-
- --. _,
hen I think of the hometown of my youth,
.. all that I seem to remember is dust-the
brown, crumbly dust oflate summer-arid, sterile
dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water,
gets into the throat and between the toes of bare
brown feet. I don't know why I should remember
only the dust. Surely th:re must have been lush
reen lawns and paved streets under leafy shade
rees somewhere in town; but memory is an abtract painting-it does not present tbings as they '
are, but rather as they feel. And so, when I think of
that time and that place, I remember only the
dry September of the dirt roads and
grassless yards of the shantytown
where I lived. And one other
thing I remember,
another incongruency 1
of memory-a brilliant
splash of sunny yellow
against the dust-Miss
Lottie's marigolds.
Whenever the memory of
those.marigolds flashes across
my mind, a strange nostalgia
comes with it and remains long
after the picture has faded. I feel again
the chaotic emotions of adolescence; illusive as
smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before
me now. Joy and rage and wild animal gladness
and shame become tangled together in the
multicolored skein2 of fourteen-going-on-fifteen
as I recall that devastating moment when I was
suddenly more woman than child, years ago in
Miss Lottie's yard. I think of those marigolds at
the strangest times; I remember them vividly
now as I desperately p·ass away the time. . . .
· I suppose that futile waiting was the sorrowful background music of our impoverished little
1. incongruency (in'ka~'grao ·on ·se) n.: inconsistency;
lack of agreement or harmony.
2. mitlticolored skein (shin): The writer is comparing
her many feelings to a long, coiled piece (skein) of
many- {multi) colored yarn.
1211
@·1§fj
~-·-..--------­
~--· •
..... "---'------
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-~-'
community when I was young. The Depression
that gripped the nation was no new thing to us,
for the black workers of rural Maryland had
always been depressed. I don't know what it was
that we were waiting for; certainly not for the
~prosperity that was "just around the corner;' for
those were white folks' words, which we never
believed. Nor did we wait for hard work and
thrift to pay off in shining success, as the
American Dream promised, for we knew better
than that, too. Perhaps we waited for a miracle,
amorphous 3 in concept but necessary if one
were to have the grit to rise before
dawn each day and labor in the
white man's vineyard until after
dark, or to wander about in
the September dust offering
one's sweat in return for
some meager share of bread.
But God was chary4 with
miracles in those days, and
so we waited-and waited.
We children, of course, were
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. Nowadays we would be called culturally deprived and people would write books and
hold conferences about us. In those days everybody we knew was just as hungry and ill clad as we
were. Poverty was the cage in which we all were
trapped, and our hatred of it was still the vague,
undirected restlessness of the zoo-bred flamingo
who knows that nature created him to fly free.
3. amorphous (o · mor'fas) adj.: vague; shapeless.
4. chary (cher'e) adj.: not generous.
Vocabulary
arid (ar'id) adj.: lacking enough water for many .
types of plants to grow; dry.
futile (fyoot"l) _adj.: useless; vain.
impoverished (im · pav' er· ishd) v. used as adj.:
poor; poverty-stricken.
Character • Using Primary and Secondary Sources
.. _-:- .2.
--
·. __ ·,-:.,;
w,,-''
I
I
I
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j
-:~
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I
l
As I think of those days I feel most poignantly
the tag end of summer, the bright, dry times
when we began to have a sense of shortening
days and the imminence of the cold.
By the tim<;J was fourteen,, my brother Joey
and I were the only children left at our house,
the older ones having left home for early marriage or the lure of the city, and the two babies
having been sent to relatives who might care for
them better than we. Joey was three years
younger than I, and a boy, and therefore vastly
inferior. Each morning our mother and father
trudged wearily down the dirt road and around
the bend, she to her domestic job, he to' his daily
unsuccessful quest for work. After our few
chores around the tumbledown shanty, Joey and
I were free to run wild in the sun with other
children similarly situated.
For the most part, those days are ill-defined
in my memory, running together and combining
like a fresh watercolor painting left out in the
rain. I remember squatting in the road drawing
a picture in the dust, a picture which Joey
gleefully erased with one sweep of his dirty foot.
I remember fishing for minnows in a muddy
creek and watching sadly as they eluded my
cupped hands, while Joey laughed uproariously.
And I remember, that year, a strange restlessne.ss
of body and of spirit; a feeling that something
old and familiar was ending, and something•unknown and therefore terrifying was beginning.
One day returns to me with special clarity
for some reason, perhaps because it was the
beginning of the experience that in some..
jnexplicable5·way marked the end of innocence. I was loafing underl:he great.oak free in
our yard, deep in some reverie which I have
now forgotten, except that it involved some secret, secret thoughts of one of the Harris boys .
across the yard. Joey and a bunch of kids were
bored now with the old tire suspended from an
5. inexplicable (in· eks'pli ·b · bol) adj.: not explainable
or understandable.
oak limb, which had kept them entertained
for a while.
"Hey, Lizabeth;' Joey yelled. He never talked
when he could yell. "Hey, Lizabeth, let's go
som~where."
•
- I came reluctantly from my privat<:._world.
"Where you want to go? What you want to do?"
The truth was that we were becoming tired
of the formlessness of our summer days. The
idleness whose prospect had seemed so beautiful
during the busy days of spring now had degenerated to an almost desperate effort to fill up the
empty midday hours.
"Let's go see can we find some locusts on the
hill;' someone suggested. ·
. Joey was scornful. "Ain't no more locusts
there.Y'all got 'em all while they was still green."
The argument that followed was brief and
not really worth the effort. Hunting locust trees
wasn't fun anymore by now.
"Tell you what," said Joey finally, his eyes
sparkling. "Let's us go over to Miss Lottie's."
The idea caught on at once, for annoying
Miss Lottie was always fun. I was still child
enough to scamper along with the group over
rickety fences and through bushes that tore our
already raggedy clothes, back to where Miss Lottie lived. I think now that we must have made a
tragicomic spectacle, five or six kids of different
ages, each of us clad in only one garment-the
girls in faded dresses that
·~
were too long or too short,
' MOT!VAT!ON
the boys in patchy pants,
AND
CONFUCT
their sweaty brown chests
I. What do you
gleaming in the hot sun.
think motivates·
A little cloud of dust folthe children to
lowed our thin legs and bare t go to Miss
feet as we tramped over the ! Lottie's house
\ to annoy -her?
barren land. ~ ·
.~~
L-~·-··------~- -~··-·-·
Vocabulary
po;gnantly (poin'yant·le) adv.: with a sharp sadness
or pain; movingly.
clarity (klar'a·te) n.: clearness.
-·."
Marigo!ds
_:.
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121
i
When Miss Lottie's house came into view we
stoicism7 that one associates with Indian faces.
Miss Lottie didn't like intruders either, especially
st~p,ped, ostensibly6 to plan our strategy, but
children. She never left her yard, and nobody
actually to reinforce our courage. Miss Lottie's
ever visifed her. We never knew how she manhouse was the most ramshackle of all our ramshackle homes. The sun and rain had long since
aged those necessities which depend on human
faded its rickety frame siding from white to a
interaction-how she ate, for example, or even
sullen gray. Th~ boards themselves seemed to
whether she ate. When we were tiny children, we
remain upright not from being nailed together
thought Miss Lottie was a witch and we made up
but rather from leaning together, like a house
tales that we half believed ourselves about her
that a child might have constructed from cards.
exploits. We were far too sophisticated now, of ·
A brisk wind might have blown it down, and
course, to believe the witch nonsense. But old
fears have a way of clinging like cobwebs, and so
the fact that it was still standing implied a kind
of enchantment that was stronger than the
when we sighted the tumbledown shack, we had
elements. There it stood and as far as I know
to stop to reinforce our nerves.
is standing yet-a gray, rotting thing with no
"Look, there she is;' I whispered, forgetting
porch, no shutters, no steps, set on a cramped
that Miss Lottie could not possibly have heard
me from that distance. "She's fooling with them
lot with no grass, not even any weeds-a monument to decay.
crazy flowers."
''Yeh, look at 'er."
In front of the house in a squeaky rocking
chair sat Miss Lottie's son, John Burke, completMiss Lottie's marigolds were perhaps the
ing the.impression of decay.John Burke was
strangest part of the picture. Certainly they did
what was known as.queer-headed. Il'lack and
not fit in with the crumbling decay of the rest of
ageless, he sat rocking day in and day out in a
her yard. Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front
mindless stupor, lulled by the monotonous
of the sorry gray house, rose suddenly and
shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms,
squeak-squawk of the chair. A battered hat
clumped together in enormous mounds, warm
atop his shaggy head shaded him from the sun.
Usually John Burke was totally unaware of
and passionate and sun-golden. The old black
witch-woman worked on them all summer,
everything outside his quiet dream world. But
every summer, down-Oli her creaky knees,
if you disturbed him, if you intruded upon
his. fantasies, he would become enraged, strike
weeding and cultivating and arranging, while
out at you, and curse at you in some strange
the house crumbled and John Burke rocked. For
some perverse reason, we children hated those
enchanted language which only he could understand. We children made a game of thinking of • marigolds. They interfered with the perfect
ways to disturb John Burke and then to elude his
ugliness of the place; they were too beautifµl;
violent retribution.
_
they said too much that we cbukl: not UnderBut our real fun and our real fear lay in Miss
stand; they did.not make sense. There was someLottie herself. Miss Lottie seemed to be at least a
thing in the vigor with which the old woman
hundred years old. Her big frame still held traces
destroyed the weeds that intimidated us. It
. \
of the tall, powerful womari she must have been
should have been a comical s]ght-tlle old
in youth, although it was now bent and drawn.
woman with the man's hat on her crapped white
Her smooth skin was a dark reddish brown, and
head, leaning over the bright mound>, her big
her face had Indian-like features and the stern
7.
6. ostensibly (a· sten'so ·hie) adv.: seemingly; apparently.
122
stoi~ism
(st6 1i·siz';;tm) n.: calm indifference to
pleasure or pain.
li@:.JM Character• Using Primary and Secondary Sources
Southern Limited ( 1976) by Romare Bearden. Collage.
backside in the air-but it wasn't co.mica!, it W<tS
something we could not name. We ·had to annoy
her by whizzing a pebble into her flowers or by
hyelling a dirty word, then dancing away from
her rage, reveling in our
youth and mocking her age.
MOT~VATiON
Actually, I think it was .the
2. What reasons
· flowers we wanted to descan you give to
explain why Miss
troy, but nobody had lhe
Lottie works
nerve to try it, not even Joey,
so hard in her
who wa.s usually fool enough garden?
to try anything. _%_
"Y'all git some stones;' commanded _Joey now.
and was met with instant giggling obedience as
everyone except me began to gather pebbles
from the dusty ground. "Come on, Lizabeth:'
I just stood there peering through the bushes,
:g,::
·.·'
·_. j
torn between wanting to join the fun and feeling
that it was all a bit silly.
"You scared, Lizabeth?"
I cursed and spat on the ground-my favorite
gesture of phony bravado. "Y'all children get the
stones, I'll show you how to use 'em!'
I said before that we children were not cone·
sciously aware of how thick were the bars of our
cage. I wonder now, though, whether we were
,. j
not more aware of it than I thought. Perhaps
we hac:Lsome.dim f\Qtion o.f what we were, and
how little chance we; hf1d of being anything else.
Otherwise, why would we h:;we oeen so preoccupied with destruction?~y,fiay, the pebbles
were collected quickly, and everybody looked at
me to begin the fun.
('Come on, y'all.
1
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Marigolds··
..
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113
We crept to the edge of the bushes that bordereq_the narrow road in front of Miss Lottie's
place. She was working placidly, kneeling over the
flowers, her dark hand plunged into the golden
mound. Suddenly zing-an expertly aimed ston~
cut the head off one of the blossoms.
·"Who out there?" Miss Lottie's backside came
down and her head came up as her sharp eyes
searched the bushes. "You better git!"
We had crouched down out of sight in the
bushes, where we stifled the giggles that insisted
on coming. Miss. Lottie gazed warily across the
, road for a moment, then-cautiously returned
to her weeding. Zing-Joey sent a
pebble into the blooms, and
another marigold was beheaded.
Miss Lottie was enraged
now. She began struggling to
her feet, leaning on a rickety
cane and shouting, "Y'all git!
Go on home!" Then the rest
of the kids let loose with their
pebbles, storming the flowers
and laughing wildly and sense....· ... r ,
lessly at Miss Lottie's impotent rage.
She shook her stick at us and started shakily
toward the road crying, "Git 'long! John Burke!
John Burke, come help!':
Then I lost my head entirely, mad with the
power of inciting such rage, and ran out of the
bushes in the storm of pebbles, straight toward
Miss Lottie, chanting madly, "Old witch, fell in a
ditch, picked up a penny and thought she was
rich!" The children screamed with delight,
dropped their pebbles, and joined the crazy
dance, swarming around Miss Lottie like bees and
chanting, "Old lady witch!" while she screamed
curses-at us. The madness lasted only a moment,
for John Burke, startled at last, lurched out of his
chair, and we dashed for the bushes just as Miss
Lottie's cane went whizzing at my head.
I did not join the merriment when the kids
gathered again under the oak in our bare yard.
Sudclenly I was ashamed, and I_ did not like°being
ashamed. The child in me sulked and said it was
all in fun, but the woman in rne flinched afthe
thought ofl:he malicious attack that I had led.
The mood lasted all afternoon. When we ate the
bea~~ and rice that !I'~~ SUP,J7,er-that night, I did
not notice my father's silence, for he was always
silent these days, nor did I notice my mother's
absence, for she always worked until well into
evening. Joey and I had a particularly bitter argument after supper; his exuberance got on my
nerves. Finally I stretched out upon the pallet8 in
the room we shared and fell into a fitful doze.
When I awoke, somewhere in the
middle of the night, my mother had
;· ·, ' '' · · ·
returned, and I vaguely listened to
,- - ' ,.,-:' - .<:·.:; -_:;;~::­
the conversation that was audible through the thin walls that
; _· _ s~d-ourro;;;:;;-~stI
'; ~~:;~:~~~;~~ic~~;~~:: \
.Ure?v ·. p~~c~ft:i~~~~;=g'.~~~:.~~ved))
,,,:
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to listen to it; it made things seem all
right somehow. But my father's voice /
cut through hers, shattering the peace.
/
"Twenty~o years, Maybelle, twent)'-tWo
years;' he was say~g-;-"andTgot nothing for you,
nothing, nothing."
"It's all right, honey, you'll get something.
Everybody out of work now, you know that."
"It ain't right. Ain't no man ought to eat
his woman's food year in and year out, and
see his children running wild. Ain't nothing
right about that!'
L
8. pallet (pal'it) n.: small bed or pad laid directly on
the floor.
r
inciting (in· sit'iD) v. used as n.: stirring up.
malicious (me·lish'es) adj.: showing a desire to
I
124
8ijfR$§ff
Vocabulary
placidly (plas'id ·le) adv.: calmly; quietly.
harm another; spiteful.
Character • Using Primary and Secondary Sources
... ·-
---.--.
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"Honey, you took good care of us when you
cry and be comforted. The night was silent now
had it. Ain't nobody got nothing nowadays:'
except for the sound of the crickets and of Joey's
"I ain't taiking about nobody else, I'm talking • soft breathing. But the room was too crowded
about me. God knows I try." My mother said
with fear to allow me to sleep, and finally, feeling
the terrible aloneness of 4 A.M., I decided to
something I could not hear, and my father cried
out louder, "What must a man do, tell me that?"
awaken Joey.
"Look, we ain't starvipg. I git paid every
"Duch! What's the matter-with you? What
w~ek, and Mrs. Ellis is real nice about giving me·
you want?" he demanded disagreeably when I
things. She gonna let me have Mr. Eilis's old coat
had pinched and slapped him awake.
'(Come on> wake up."
for you this winter-"
"Damn Mr. Eilis's coat! And damn his money!
"What for? Go 'waY:'
You think I want white folks' leavings? Damn,
I was lost for a reasonable reply. I could not
Maybelle" -and suddenly he sobbed, lo'udly and
say, "I'm scared and I don't want to be alone:' so
I
merely said, "I'm going out. If you want to
painfully, and cried helplessly and hopelessly
come, come on:'
in the dark night. I had never heard a man cry
before. I did not know men ever cried. I covered
The promise of adventure awoke him. "Going
my ears with my hands but could not cut off the
out now? Where to, Lizabeth? What you going
to do?"
sound of my father's harsh, painful, despairing
I was pulling iny dress over my head. Until
sobs. My father was a strong man who could
whisk a child upon his shoulders and go singing
now I had not thought of going out. "Just come
on," I replied tersely.
through the house. My father whittled toys
I was out the window and halfway down the
for us, and laughed so loud that the great oak
road before Joey caught up with me.
seemed to laugh with him, and taught us how to
fish and hunt rabbits. How couldit be that my
"Wait, Lizabeth, where you going?"
father was crying? But the
I was running as if the Furies 9 were after me,
sobs went on, unstifled,
as perhaps they were-running silently and furi~
MOTIVATION
ously until I came to where I had half known I
, finally quieting until I could
was headed: to Miss Lottie's yard .
hear my mother's voice, deep .3. Why does
Lizabeth's father
and rich, humming softly
The half-dawn light was more eerie than
break down
complete darkness, and in it the old house was
as she used to hum to a
aod cry?
like the ruin that my world had become-foul
frightened child. _,,.?f:The world had lost its boundary lines. My
and crumbling, a grotesque caricature. It looked
mother, who was small and soft, was now the
haunted, but I was not afraid, because I was
strength of the family; my father, who was the
haunted too.
"Lizabeth, you lost your mind?" panted Joey.
rock on which the family had been built, was
sobbing like the tiniest child. Everything was
I had indeed lost my mind,Jor all th~ smolsuddepJy out of tune, like a broken accordion.
dering emotiorifof tliat sif:inmer swelled incme
Where did I fit into this crazy picture? I do not
and burst-'-4hegreat"fieedfor'th)''mother.,who
wasnever there;;thehopelessnessofour,poyerty
now remember my thoughts, only a feeling of
great bewilderment and fear.
Long after the sobbing and humming had
9. Furies (fyoor'ez): in Greek and Roman mythology,
stopped, I lay on the pallet, still as stone with my
spirits who pursue people who have committed
hands over my ears, wishing that I too could
crimes, sometimes driving them mad.
Marigolds
..~ . '~
and- degradation, the bewilderment of being
lived in it all her life. Now at the end of that..
neither child not woman arid yet both aNmce,
life sge hadnathing except a falling-dowR hut,
the fearunleashedbymffather's tears. And
a wrecked body, and John Burke, the mindless
son of her passiem. Whatever-Verve there was
) these feelings combined in one great impulse
left in her, whatever was oflove
beauty
toward destructiolh
"Lizabeth!))
and jay that had not been squeezed out by 1ife,
had been there iri theniarigolds she had so
I leaped furiously into the mounds of
- tenderly cared for:'
marigolds' and pulled madly, trampling and
pulling and destroying the
Of course I could not express the things that
perfect yellow blooms. The
~
I
knew
about Miss Lottie as I stood there awk_,,,.,...
MOTIVATION!
fresh smell of early morning
ward and ashamed. The years have put words
. AN![)
and of dew-soaked marito the things I knew in that moment, and as I
CONIFUCT
golds spurred me on as I
look
back upon it, I know that that. moment
4. Why does
went tearing and mangling
marked the end of innocence. Innocence
Lizabeth destroy
the
marigolds/
involves an unseeing acceptance of things
and sobbing while Joey
Why do you
at face value, an ignorance of the area below
tugge~ my dress or my waist
think she cries as
she does so?
the surface. In that humiliating moment I
crying, "Lizabeth, stop,
looked beyond myself and into the depths of
please stop!" ~
And then I was sitting in the ruined little
another person. This was the beginning of
compassion, and one cannot have both comgarden among the uprooted and ruined
flowers, crying and crying, and it was too late
passi_on and innocence.
..
The years have taken me worlds away from' _
to undo what I had done. Joey was sitting
beside me, silent and frightened, not knowing
that time and that place, from the dust and
what to say. Then, "Lizabeth, look."
squalor of our lives, and from the bright thing
that I destroyed in a blind, childish striking
I opened my swollen eyes and saw in front
out at God knows what. Miss Lottie died long
of me a pair oflarge, calloused feet; my gaze
ago and many years have passed since I last
lifted to the swollen legs, the age-distorted
saw her hut, completely barren at last, for
body clad in a tight cotton nightdress, and
despite my wild contrition she never planted
· then the shadowed Indian face surrounded
marigolds again. Yet, there are times when the
by stubby white hair. And there was no rage
imag·e of those passionate
in the face now, now that the garden was
destroyed and there was_ nothing any longer
yellow mounds returns with
~
a painful poignancy. For
to be protected.
MOTIVATION!
one does not have to be ig"M-miss Lottie!" I scrambled to my feet
5. What motivates
Lizabeth to tell
and just stood there and stared at her, and that
norant and poor to find
this story/ Why
that his life is as barren as
. was the moment when childhood faded and
does she still think
of Miss Lottie's
the dusty yards of our
womanhood began. That violent, crazy act was
marigolds/.
town. And I too have
the last act of childhood. For as I gazed at the
planted marigolds. 11!1 ~
immobile face with the sad, weary eyes, I gazed
upon a kind of reality which is hidden to
childhood. The witeh was no longer a w~tch i'V'I
but onlya broken old womari: viho had ·dared
Vocabulary
contrition (kan ·trish'an) n.: deep feelings of guilt
to createbeaTit'(ifi"the midst 6f ugliness arfd
and repentance.
sterility. She had been born in squaloroand
and
<ti:<".~:.~.
·,.-·.
•
-•t
r
126
····-·.--.-··-· -.-. ·•···
iiiil¢·1!§i
Character • Using Primary and Secondary Sources
f
I
Ii
I
I
I
Eugenia W. Collier
I'
"I Must Have Done My job WeW'
"Marigolds" is a story that emerged from
a difficult time in the life of its author,
. ). Collier,
Eugenia W. Collier ( 1928who has taught English at Howard University, Baltimore Community College, and
Morgan State University, tells how she came
to write "Marigolds" and what the story
means to her:
!
.,I
1
'
I
I
I
4,
I
''When I talk with people about
'Marigolds,' someone usually asks me
whether the story is autobiographical. I am
always pleased with the question, because it
means that I must have done my job wellconvinced the reader that the incidents in
the story are actually happening. However,
I always end up admitting that Lizabeth and
I are two very different people. I was born
and bred in the city of Baltimore, and my
family never had the economic problems of
Lizabeth's. In some ways we are different in
temperament: I was never as daring as Lizabeth, never a leade.r among my peers. However, I hope that through her I have
captured an experience which most young
people have-the painful passage from
childhood to adulthood, a passage which
can be understood only in retrospect. Also,
· I was tapping into another deeply human
experience: hoping desperately for something (planting marigolds) and then having
that hope destroyed.
I wrote 'Marigolds' at. a time of profound unhappiness. One night I had a
tremendous urge to write. I wrote nonstop until the story was finished-about
twenty-four hours. Later I sent 'Marigolds'
(a[eng with a fee I could hardly afford) to
a well-advertised literary agency, which
returned the story (not the fee) with a
note saying that it had no plot, no conflict,
and no hope of publication. Discouraged;.
I put 'Marigolds' away. Five years later,
doing research for a project on black writing of the 1960s, I read stories in Negro
Digest which were similar in subject matter to 'Marigolds.' I submitted my story, ·
and Negro Digest published it. It won the
Gwendolyn Brooks Prize for Fiction, it
was selected for inclusion in an anthology
of black fiction, and since then it has been
included in a number of collections. Of
all the fiction I have written, 'Marigolds'.
· .
remains my favorite.''
Marigolds
.
··~-·
.
.-.
..
127
literary Response and Analysis
characters have had about the
marigolds throughout the story:
Reading Check
1. What is the story's settirng-that
,.is, when and where does the story
take place?
2. Who is Miss Lottie? Describe the
children's daytime confrontation
with her.
J. What does Lizabeth discover about
her parents when she overhears their
conversation?
.<II. What does Lizabeth do to Miss Lottie's flowers just before dawn?
m.
~nterpretations
· .. _.1
5. What are Lizabeth's urntemaD
cornflkts-what personal monsters
are troubling her?
6.- Lizabeth felt ashamed after she led
the first attack against Miss Lottie.
Why doesn't her sense of shame
prevent her from destroying the garden at the end of the story? How is
her motivatDorn for this destructive
act different from her motivation for
taunting Miss Lottie earlier? =4.?f'
7. T,he narrator doesn't tell us much
about the eff<,0ct on Miss Lottie of
the extemaD conflict over the
marigolds. Using the details the
narrator does provide, explain how
you think Miss Lottie was affected.
8. U,zabeth says that destroying the
marigolds was her last act of childhood. Why does she think of herself
as an adult from that moment on?
9. What does Lizabeth mean at the end
of the story when she says that she
too has planted marigolds? What
do you think the marigolds have
come to mean in the story? To
answer, consider the feelings that the
• Miss Lottie loves and cares for
them.
The children do not understand
why they are there.
• Lizabeth wants to destroy them.
Lizabeth's parents are su.nbordurnate
characters in the story, but their
late-night conversation has a big im~
pact on her. "The world had lost its
boundary lines," she says in reaction
to their conversation. What does she
mean? What situations might make a
child feel that boundaries.have.been
lost?
Evah.natim11
(u:
Compare Lizabeth's feelings at the
end of the story with those of the
speaker of "Forgive My Guilt" (see
the Cormection on page 128). What
did both children discover? In both
cases, did you find it credible that a
single act could cause a child to make
such an important discovery? Explain
your answer.
-writing
Tu.nrrnirng f'oirnts
Write an au.ntobiographicai murative
about a turning point in your life, an
incident-whether minor or major, happy .
or sad-that made you grow up a little.
What fears or conflicts did you face? What
was the outcome of the incident? Include a
reflection telling how the event brought
you a little closer to being an adult. (Be
st.ire to check your Quickw~ite notes.)
tf
~ Ilse "Writing an AutobiographkaD
Narrative," pages 66-13, for heip with
this assignment.
. tmeadliiDll~
51ka011!il"li'<!ll 3.3
Analyze ·
interactions
between main
and subordinate
characters in a
literary text
(e.g., internal
and external
conflicts,
motivations,
relationships,
influences) and
explain the
way those
interactions
affect the plot.
Marigolds
129