How Eugenia Collier Depicts Poverty in Her Short Story, Marigolds

Imagine, you are reading a story in class and the teacher asks for the theme. Often, men and women in the class will come up with distinct answers. This may possibly make you wonder if there is a single proper answer. Considering that the theme is the moral or topic of the story, most stories can and do have far more than 1. For example the brief story “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier, in this story more than 1 theme is shown and perceived via the main character Lizabeth. Examples of these themes are poverty, maturity, and the relationship among innocence and compassion. All of which can be discovered in contemporary day life.

The setting all through the story presents the theme of poverty, which was frequent for the duration of the Fantastic Depression. In these challenging times Lizabeth’s parents continuously function to supply for the family, and their absence becomes one particular of the things motivating Lizabeth’s anger. When Lizabeth overhears her father cry to her mother about his deep feelings of uselessness, due to becoming unable to work and offer for his household, it causes Lizabeth to obtain an uncontrollable rage which leads to the destruction of Miss Lottie’s marigolds. (pages 221-222, Collier)

In the modern day, concerns like hunger, thirst, and illness have far more of an association with poverty. Poverty means that men and women lack the amount of minimum meals and shelter that is essential for sustainment of life, possibly with experience of lifelong troubles. The lack of materials can lead men and women to irrational issues such as stealing or functioning illegal jobs. These outcomes encourage a lot more difficulty, such as, going to jail causing their family members to be additional in debt for either charges or bail loans.

The destruction of Miss Lottie’s marigolds leads to the themes of maturity, innocence, and compassion, which tie together. In lines 370-375, Lizabeth states that “only via a loss of innocence can 1 obtain compassion”. In her case, the loss of innocence will outcome in maturity. Even though Lizabeth reflects on how ashamed she felt standing in the ruined marigolds a sudden realization of her lost innocence gave her maturity. Then, when she was older, Lizabeth realized the reason she felt ashamed was since she had destroyed the a single beauty Ms. Lottie had designed in a midst of the poverty and ugliness. The moment of lost innocence grants Lizabeth her maturity and compassion.

In contemporary day, “people think the loss of innocence as which means the loss of virginity, but this is far from correct. Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of items at face worth, an ignorance of the area under the surface.”(lines 369-373, Collier) “This was the beginning of compassion, and a single can not have both compassion and innocence.” (lines 374-375, Collier) Being aware of compassion means obtaining awareness of the suffering of others with sympathy for the events that have an effect on their lives. You may possibly have knowledgeable this when you friend’s pet or loved 1 died and you comforted them and showed your sympathy. The loss of innocence for this case would be the loss of ignorance towards death.

These days, maturity is typically connected with the age of 18, when you turn into a legal adult. Even so maturity is the time of reaching the most advanced stage in the method of becoming totally grown or created. For instance when men and women say you seem mature for your age, this frequently indicates you have an advanced mindset for your age. At one time or an additional you might have necessary to be a far more mature person although monitoring younger youngsters.

A lot of occasions the author won’t give the theme but rather let you figure it out and see what it implies to you, like a type of symbolism. In this story the author presents a handful of examples of the theme that you may possibly locate in life at a single point or another. A story can have much more than one theme in order to show numerous lessons or hardships we may go through during our lives. After all, what is life with out its ups and downs?