What Is The Tone Of Marigolds By Eugenia Collier

In the novel, flowers are directly used as symbolism; Ms. Dubose has Camellias, Mayella has Geraniums, and Miss. Maudie Atkinson has her Azaleas.

The author uses tone and images throughout to compare and contrast the concepts of “black wealth” and a “hard life”. The author combines the use of images with blunt word combinations to make her point; for example, “you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet”. This image evokes the warmth of remembering a special community with the negative, have to use outdoor facilities. Another example of this combination of tone and imagery is “how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in”. Again the author’s positive memory is of feeling fresh after her bath combined with a negative, the fact that it was a barbecue drum.

Eugenia Collier, the author of the short story Marigolds makes great use of literary devices such as imagery, diction, flashback, and juxtaposition in a way that creates a voice for the narrator that conveys both the regret over, and possibly the longing for her childhood. The diction, that is, the vocabulary choice is expertly combined with imagery, or the unique descriptions and sensory details, in order to allow the reader to formulate the experiences and the surroundings of the narrator's childhood in their imaginations. Flashback is used to allow the narrator to not only explain how she viewed the events of her past as a child, but to compare these views with her adult feelings of the same events. Juxtaposition aids in further explaining the connection between the setting and emotions of the main character, creating a better picture of the narrator’s life. These elements all combine to construct a narrative that effectively conveys the coming of age theme.

Eugenia Collier, the author of Marigolds evokes empathy in the audience to inspire action and bring about a deeper understanding of the world by using first person point of view in her text, so she used Lizabeth an imaginary person to tell a story from her point of view. She uses Lizabeth as the narrator of the story, so Lizabeth tells a story about her life experience in dusty depression-era town. In the text where it mentions “whatever verve, there was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had…. Awkward and ashamed”(Lizabeth 62-63) and “She never planted marigolds again….. And I too have planted marigolds”(Lizabeth 64), she is trying to describe something. She is trying to describe that the marigolds brought happiness

There comes a point in one’s life when they must recognize the hardships placed upon them, and instead of being ignorant of those hardships, they must confront them head-on. In “Marigolds”, a short story by Eugenia Collier, the main protagonist, Lizabeth, encounters various struggles that come with living in a poor town in rural Maryland during the Depression, allowing her to learn more about growing up and accepting reality with all its flaws. Lizabeth is a 14-year-old girl who feels a conflict between her inner child and her inner woman, as she is unable to do anything that satisfies both sides of her. She feels too old to be a child, yet too young to be a

The fact that the narrator could not fix the torn part of the jacket can indicate that his family is struggling to afford money for themselves. These certain examples help portray the issues of poverty that the narrator's family struggles.

In “Marigolds” a young girl is growing up during the Great Depression. For Lizabeth, the narrator, everyday is a challenge. As she transitions from an innocent, naive child to an aware, yet unsure young woman, the smooth road she’s been traveling on suddenly becomes bumpy and unfamiliar when a fit of anger taken out on her neighbor marks Lizabeth’s growing up. “All the smoldering emotions of that summer swelled in me and burst- the great need for my mother who was never there, the hopelessness of our poverty and degradation, the bewilderment of being neither child nor woman and yet both at once…”, (Collier, “Marigolds”). All of the emotions that Lizabeth has been holding in spill out of her in an audacious, violent action that will exile her childhood; the destroying of Miss Lottie’s prized marigolds.When Lizabeth realizes with remorse what she’s done, she gains the heavy burden of adulthood. “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have both compassion and innocence”, (Collier, “Marigolds”). When Lizabeth conveys that Miss Lottie had planted marigolds as a show of passion and hope, she becomes compassionate towards Miss Lottie, ridding her of her childish innocence. While “Hard on the Gas” is minimally worded, the meaning of the poem speaks volumes. The poem conveys growing up, and the fact that the road to adulthood is not, in fact, smooth. “Rush, rest, rush, rest”,

The author uses a seemingly endless cycle of poverty to emphasize the cage in which the characters are trapped. As Lizabeth muses over her childhood, she recalls the daily cycle of how “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.” (1). Every morning began the same way, passed the same way, and ended the same way. Lizabeth feels trapped, forced to go through the same series of events for what seems to be the rest of her life, with the same people, in the same place. When the author pairs this with the “dusty” setting of the town and the time placement of the Great Depression, it creates an effect of hopelessness for the first part of the story. This is only furthered by Lizabeth continually returning to the idea that “Poverty was the cage in which we were all trapped.” (1). Lizabeth opens the story by first giving a description of her hometown as “dusty”, remembering the poverty and hopelessness. She then continues by referring to the cage of not having enough money, and the cycle that it put them through, and ends by alluding to her future being limited to her poverty.

The character Lizabeth in “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier changes the course of the story. This is evident on page 219 when Lizbeth and her friends ruin some of Miss Lottie's Marigolds by throwing pebbles at them and taking the heads of the flower. This shows her being irresponsible and childish. When the others run, however, she feels ashamed by what she had done. Lizabeth also changes when she hears her father crying. She is confused and scared because she is not sure of what had been happening. She is further confused when her mother begins to comfort her husband as he is acting weak (page 221-222). Further, Lizabeth’s transformation is notable on page 222 when she decides to leave the house with her younger brother, being both responsible

The transformations in people are caused by a variety of circumstances. Within the variety of these circumstances, stress is the most influential one. In Eugenia Collier’s short story Marigolds, it tells the narrative of a young African-American girl living in rural Maryland. Due to her frustration with life, she destroys Miss Lottie’s marigolds. In the story Marigolds, the author uses the narrator’s transformation and characterization to convey that identity is only found in times of crisis.

The poem describes the weather and its effect on cotton flower by pointing out the dying branches and vanishing cotton. The image of insufficiency, struggle and death parallel the oppression of African American race. The beginning of the poem illustrates the struggle and suffering of the cotton flower; which represent the misery of African Americans and also gives an idea that there is no hope for them. But at the end the speaker says “brown eyes that loves without a trace of fear/ Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (lines 13-14). This shows the rise of the African American race, and their fight against racism. The author used mood, tone and

The setting of Alice Walkers short story” The Flowers” is important for us, the readers to obtain a perspective of how life was like growing up for a 10 year old African American girl by the name of Myop. The title of the story is “The Flowers.” When you think about flowers, you instantly compare them to being beautiful, pure, and innocent. The title of the “The Flowers” is a symbolism that correlates to Myop who is the protagonist of the story. Myop is just like a flower in the beginning of the story. She’s a pure and innocent child but that pure innocence changes when she discovers something that’ll change her life forever.

Parker also explains her purpose through the use of stylistic devices like imagery. She uses concrete images to portray the idea of poverty. She explains that “Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one spark on the newspapers covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in flames.” What adds to the readers idea of poverty is the horrendous image of a child burning to death, also the newspaper-covered wall of a make-shift house. There are plenty other nouns like grits with no oleo, runny noses, and diapers that paint an image of poverty in the reader ́s head. You also have the sense of ́smell ́ through this essay by phrases that describe the “sour milk”, “urine”, and “stench of rotting teeth”. You can also ́feel ́ poverty through hands that are “so cracked and red”, since the author cannot afford vaseline. The use of imagery makes the a!udience more conscious of the effects of poverty. !

Obviously the author has lived through the depression and was black because one could not write something so accurate in accordance to that time period and have one feel the deep emotional impact of her writings without experiencing it personally.  In the first sentence she writes “…all I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets in to the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of the bare brown feet.”  In this phrase the words give a harsh, cruel feeling of how the depression was, which could then explain how she remembers the depression and that it was a hard time for her.  Most likely it was a significantly hopeless moment in her life.  In the next paragraph she writes “When the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded.”  Knowing the marigolds symbolize hope the word “nostalgia” gives a feeling of longing, since the denotative meaning is yearning.  When stating the marigolds give a “strange nostalgia” the author could be thinking how she, sometime in her life, longed to have hope.  She needed to have something to look forward to or just something to look at to give her hope.  Later, towards the end of the story she explains “…Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.”  The words she uses give a sense of wisdom

One of the 20th century’s most important and influential modernist poets was Hilda Doolittle, more commonly known as H.D. While other artists struggled to find a new mode of expression, H.D. found imagism and created intense poems delving into very specific depictions. In “Sheltered Garden,” H.D. employs intense imagery using nature in order to put forth an opinion or viewpoint, which is also highlighted by another poem titled, “Sea Rose.” By analyzing these two poems, one can more fully comprehend the modernist movement/mentality and how H.D. shaped her own form of poetry. In “Sheltered Garden,” the poet uses the image of a garden to not only push against society’s constraint of women, but also its imposed ideas of beauty, creating tension between the natural and the unnatural.