Student Question
What does "Marigolds" suggest about what is needed for compassion?
Quick answer:
In "Marigolds," Lizabeth realizes that to have compassion, one needs to look beneath the surface of another person and into that person's depths. She also understands that when one is innocent, this is not possible. To truly experience compassion, one must lose one's innocence.
In Eugenia Collier's short story "Marigolds," Lizabeth, her brother, Joey, and some friends seem to enjoy tormenting the unfortunate Miss Lottie. Miss Lottie has very little in her life. Her only pleasure is in her patch of marigolds that she tends with great care. These flowers provide the only beauty in the ugliness of Miss Lottie's environment, and for some reason, that makes the children all the more intent upon destroying some of them. They enjoy seeing Miss Lottie get angry.
Lizabeth, however, is beginning to feel ashamed by the children's actions. She wants to say that it is "all in fun," but she is getting too old to really believe that, and her realization about the children's maliciousness makes her angry.
In the middle of the night after the children's latest session of tormenting Miss Lottie and her flowers, Lizabeth wakes up to hear her father sobbing because he is out of work and cannot care for his family as he wants to. Lizabeth does not know how to deal with her father's agony or at the anger it causes in her. With Joey in tow, she runs out of the house and down to Miss Lottie's. She proceeds to tear up and trample all the marigolds.
Then Lizabeth sees Miss Lottie, a "broken old woman" looking at her ruined flowers, and shame overcomes her. Lizabeth realizes at that very moment that she has lost her innocence. She looks beyond Miss Lottie's appearance and understands the woman's pain. For the first time, Lizabeth has stepped out of herself and pondered "the depths of another person." This, she says, is "the beginning of compassion."
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