Fear and Hope in Marigolds :: Literary Analysis, Eugenia Collier

Eugenia Colliers Marig sometime(a)s is a recital of a colored girl living in the Great Depression. The bill does not focus on the troubles society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), save earlier is foc dod on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from electric razorishness to adulthood cause idolize in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope.Marigolds is intimately change. Collier chose a fourteen-going-on-fifteen (1) year old girl because the transition from puerility to adulthood adds layers of conflict to the story. The initially obvious conflict is that of the woman and tyke inside Elizabeth. She dissembles the child when she pulls up the marigolds The fresh smell of early archetypical light and dew-soaked marigolds spurred me on as I went tearing and mangling and sobbing (5). She (as the child) is struggling indoors once against being a woman. At the end of her rampage, she is more woman than child (1), and the chi ld in her loses the battle. As a woman, she wins a kind of domain which is hidden to childhood (5). The second conflict is also symbolic. Elizabeth represents fear. She has the feeling that something old and familiar is ending and something unknown and therefore terrifying is beginning (1). The marigolds represent hope. The reason for her great impulse towards destruction (4) was a combination of fear for the future and bitterness towards the past. In this conflict, fear wins because Miss Lottie never plants marigolds again (5). The third conflict is the most important. It takes place inside of Elizabeth and is also mingled with fear and hope. At the end of the story, fear may win symbolically, but hope wins inside of Elizabeth In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion (5). Not only does Collier use age to create depth of conflict, but she also uses Elizabeths attitude. The first conflict (the tra nsition from childhood to adulthood) could stand by itself. If Collier had created an affirmative character it would not have allowed Elizabeth to have a struggle surrounded by fear and hope. By creating a pessimistic character, Collier shows that she is bitter and fearful. That is distinct in her statement that her hatred of poverty was still the vague, undirected restlessness of a zoo bred flamingo who knows that nature created him to fly free (1).