STORY PREPARATION
Introduction
Eugenia Collier was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1928 to a father who was a doctor
and a mother who was a teacher. She is best known for her short story, “Marigolds,” which, she
claims, is not autobiographical, but was written at a time when she was unhappy. The story,
written in 1969, won the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize for Fiction.
In 1996, Ms. Collier retired from a long career as a college professor after earning her
undergraduate degree at Howard University in 1948, her master’s degree from Columbia in
1950, and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 1976.
Her works include her most recent book, Beyond the Crossroad, as well as Spread My
Wings, Breeder and Other Stories, and Ricky, a one-act play. Her stories, poems, and critical
essays have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. Collier says that the source of her
creativity is "the richness, the diversity, the beauty of my black heritage."
“Marigolds” is a story set in rural Maryland against the backdrop of the Great
Depression. Lizabeth, the 14-year-old narrator, loses her childish innocence and comes of age as
she realizes the pain she causes another individual. Collier’s narrative argues that “one cannot
have both compassion and innocence.”
This is a “memory” story that exposes a painful incident from childhood that introduces
the narrator to the realities of the adult world. “Marigolds” underscores the difficulties inherent
in “coming of age,” the impact of poverty on individuals and families, and the importance of
compassion.
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First impressions
After reading "Marigolds" jot down your own questions, thoughts, confusions and impressions.
What intrigues you about this story? What catches your attention? Make some notes on the story
or in the space below.
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APPLYING THE METHOD
Poetics
Moments in the story where the use of metaphor, simile, repetition, rhythm or voice may prompt
discussion.
1. “When I think of the hometown of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust – the
brown, crumbly dust of late 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 the dust.” (p.228, line 1)
2. …”But memory is an abstract painting – it does not represent things as they are, but
rather as they feel.” (p.228)
3. “And one other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory – a brilliant splash of
sunny yellow against the dust – Miss Lottie‟s marigolds.” (p. 228)
4. “I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence, illusive as smoke, yet as real as the
potted geranium before me now.” (p. 228)
5. “Joy and rage and wild animal gladness and shame become tangled together in the
multicolored skein of fourteen-going-on-fifteen as I recall that devastating moment…”
(p. 228)
6. “I remember them vividly now as I desperately pass away the time waiting for you, who
will not come.” (p.228) “But God was chary with miracles in those days, and so we
waited – and waited.” (p. 229)
7. “Poverty was the cage in which we were all 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.” (p. 229)
8. “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.” (p.229)
9. “I remember…” “I remember…” “And I remember, that year, a strange restlessness of
body and of spirit, a feeling that something old and familiar was ending, and something
unknown and therefore terrifying was beginning.” (p. 229)
10. “A little cloud of dust followed our thin legs and bare feet as we tramped over the barren
land.” (p. 230)
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11. “The boards themselves seemed to remain upright, not from being nailed together, but
rather from leaning together like a house that a child might have constructed from cards.”
(p. 230)
12. “But old fears have a way of clinging like cobwebs, and so when we sighted the
tumbledown shack, we had to stop to reinforce our nerves.” (p. 230)
13. “Beyond the dusty brown yard, in front of the sorry gray house, rose suddenly and
shockingly a dazzling strip of bright blossoms, clumped together in enormous mounds,
warm and passionate and sun-golden.” (p.231)
14. “I said before that we children were not consciously aware of how thick were the bars of
our cage. I wonder now, though, whether we were not more aware of it than I thought.”
(p. 232)
15. “The child in me sulked and said it was all fun, but the woman in me flinched at the
thought of the malicious attack that I had led.” (p. 233)
16. “My mother‟s voice was like a cool, dark room in summer – peaceful, soothing, quiet.”
(p. 233)
17. “Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a broken accordion.” (p. 234)
18. “I lay on the pallet, still as stone…” (p. 234)
19. “But the room was too crowded with fear to allow me to sleep…” (p. 234)
20. “I was running as if the Furies were after me, as perhaps they were – running silently and
furiously …” (p. 234-5)
21. “The half-dawn light was more eerie than complete darkness, and in it the old house was
like the ruin that my world had become – foul and crumbling, a grotesque caricature.” (p.
235)
22. “For one does not have to be ignorant or poor to find that this life is barren as the dusty
yards of our town. And I, too, have planted marigolds.” (p. 236)
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Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of poetics, etc. Additional space is on page at
end of this section.
Tensions / contrasts
Meaningful tensions or juxtapositions in the story.
1. Rite of passage between childhood and adulthood: “I recall that devastating moment
when I was suddenly more woman than child…” (p. 228) “I did not join the merriment
when the kids gathered again under the oak in our bare yard. Suddenly I was ashamed,
and I did not like being ashamed.” (p. 233) “I scrambled to my feet and just stood there
and stared at her, and that was the moment when childhood faded and womanhood began.
That violent, crazy act was the last act of childhood….I gazed upon a kind of reality
which is hidden to childhood.” (p. 235) “The years have put words to the things I knew in
that moment, and as I look back upon it, I know that that moment marked the end of
innocence.” (p. 236)
2. Memory and reality: “Memory is an abstract painting – it does not present things as they
are, but rather as they feel.” (p. 228) “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….One day returns to me with special clarity for some reason, perhaps because it was
the beginning of the experience that in some inexplicable way marked the end of
innocence.” (p. 229-30)
3. Poverty and wealth: “All that I seem to remember is dust…” “Surely there must have
been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town…”
(p. 228) “The Depression that gripped the nation was no new thing to us, for the black
workers of rural Maryland had always been depressed.” (p.229) “I don‟t know what 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.” (p. 229) “‟I git paid every
week, and Mrs. Ellis is real nice about giving me things. She gonna let me have Mr.
Ellis‟s old coat for you this winter – „Damn Mr. Ellis‟s coat! And his damn money! You
think I want white folks‟ leavings?‟” (p. 234)
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4. Poverty and family: “By the time I 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.” (p. 229) “I did not know men ever cried…My father was a strong man
who could whisk a child upon his shoulders and go singing through the house…But the
sobs went on, unstifled, finally quieting…” (p. 234) “The world had lost its boundary
lines…Everything was out of tune, like a broken accordion. Where did I fit into this crazy
picture?” (p. 234)
5. Work vs reward: “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 in concept but necessary if one was 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.” (p. 229) “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.” (p. 229) “‟Twenty-two years, Maybelle, twenty-two years,‟ he was saying, „and I
got nothing for you, nothing, nothing.‟” (p. 233) “‟God knows I try…What must a man
do, tell me that?‟” (p. 233)
6. Beauty and decay: “One other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory – a
brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust – Miss Lottie‟s marigolds.” (p. 228)
“Miss Lottie‟s marigolds were perhaps the strangest part of the picture. Certainly they did
not fit in with the crumbling decay of the rest of her yard.” (p. 231)
7. Innocence vs compassion: “I opened my swollen eyes and saw in front of me a pair of
large callused feet; my gaze lifted to the swollen legs, the age-distorted body clad in a
tight cotton nightdress, and then the shadowed Indian face surrounded by stubby white
hair. There was no rage in the face now, now that the garden was destroyed and there was
nothing any longer to be protected.” (p.235) “Whatever verve there was left in her,
whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had not been squeezed out by life had been
there in the marigolds she had so tenderly cared for.” (p. 235) “Innocence involves an
unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.
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.” (p. 236)
8. Fear and violence: “I do not now remember my thoughts, only a feeling of great
bewilderment and fear.” (p.234) “…the room was too crowded with fear to allow me to
sleep…” (p. 234) “I was running as if the Furies were after me…” (p. 234) “I had indeed
lost my mind, for 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; the
fear unleashed by my father‟s tears. And these feelings combined in one great impulse
toward destruction.” (p. 235)
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9. Youth and age: “I feel again the chaotic emotions of adolescence, illusive as smoke, yet
as real as the potted geranium before me now.” (p. 228) “After a few chores around the
tumbledown shanty, Joey and I were free to run wild in the sun with other children
similarly situated.” (p. 229) “Miss Lottie seemed to be at least one hundred years old. Her
big frame still held traces of the tall, powerful woman she must have been in youth,
although it was now bent and drawn.” (p. 231) “We had to annoy her by whizzing a
pebble into her flowers or by yelling a dirty word, then dancing away from her rage,
reveling in our youth and mocking her age.” (p. 232) “Then the rest of the kids let loose
with their pebbles, storming the flowers and laughing wildly and senselessly at Miss
Lottie‟s impotent rage.” (p. 232)
10. Consciousness and unexplained feelings: “For some perverse reason, we children hated
those marigolds. They interfered with the perfect ugliness of the place; they were too
beautiful; they said too much that we could not understand; they did not make sense.” (p.
231-2) “It should have been a comical sight… but it wasn‟t comical, it was something we
could not name.” (p. 232) “Perhaps we had some dim notion of what we were, and how
little chance we had of being anything else. Otherwise, why would we have been so
preoccupied with destruction?” (p. 232)
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of tensions/contrasts, etc. Additional space is
on page at end of this section.
Shadows
Questions, missing pieces, elements that are oblique or not fully explained.
1. Why does the narrator remember the marigolds in the context of “waiting for you, who
will not come”? Who is “you”?
2. Why does Miss Lottie and her marigolds become a target for the children?
3. What does the author mean by “memory is an abstract painting”?
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4. What impact does the Depression have on the families – both children and parents – of
those already poor?
5. Why does the narrator describe her memory of approaching adolescence as “something
unknown and therefore terrifying”?
6. Why does Lizabeth join the group of younger boys, even though she is indifferent, at
first, to their game?
7. What impact does the presence of John Burke have on the image of Miss Lottie? Why is
he included as a character in the story?
8. What do the marigolds mean to Miss Lottie? Why does the narrator relate that she “never
planted marigolds again” after her garden is destroyed?
9. What‟s the connection between the poverty of the children and their impulse toward
destruction?
10. What does the father‟s despair about his inability to provide for his family say about the
disconnection between hard work and reward?
11. Why is Lizabeth so frightened when she hears her father‟s sobs and realizes that her
mother “was now the strength of the family”?
12. What connection does Lizabeth make between her family‟s problems and Miss Lottie‟s
marigolds?
13. What does the author mean by her statement that “one cannot have both compassion and
innocence”?
14. What does the narrator imply when she claims that “I, too, have planted marigolds.”
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of shadows, etc. Additional space on page at
end of this section.
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Issues
Themes, ideas and arguments raised by the text.
1. Memory: As a story that depends on the narrator‟s recall, what impact does time elapsed,
emotion, and perspective have on the telling of these events? What does the narrator mean by
her memories “running together and combining like a fresh watercolor painting left out in the
rain”?
2. Coming of age: What is the narrator‟s perspective on this event that occurred at such a
critical time in her life? Why is “fourteen-going-on-fifteen” described as a “multicolored
skein”? The narrator describes her emotions just before she attacks the marigolds as fueled
by “the bewilderment of being neither child nor woman and yet both at once.” What does
she mean by this?
3. Poverty and its impact on families: Lizabeth learns about adult responsibilities, about
poverty and its impact on the lives of others, and about compassion. She survives without
supervision during the day, and finally recognizes “the great need for my mother, who was
never there.” Her younger siblings were sent away to live with relatives and when she hears
her father‟s sobs, she knows “the hopelessness of our poverty and degradation.” Miss Lottie
is also a victim of poverty, a broken woman who finds hope in the planting of marigolds,
who lives in squalor with a “mindless” son who is a the remnant of “her passion.”
4. Fear: When Lizabeth says that “the world has lost its boundary lines,” she loses her sense of
comfort in the world as she has known it. Her fear becomes part of the emotions that lead to
the destruction of the marigolds and combine with her despair at her father‟s tears.
5. Shame: Why does Lizabeth feel shame after joining the other children in tormenting Miss
Lottie? What does this indicate about her maturing sensibilities?
6. Beauty as an antidote for poverty: Miss Lottie‟s marigolds don‟t seem to “belong” in a town
gripped by poverty. Why does Miss Lottie choose to bring their beauty to her property? What
benefit are they to her?
7. Innocence vs. compassion: The narrator states: “People think of the loss of innocence as
meaning the loss of virginity, but this is far from true. Innocence involves an unseeing
acceptance of things a face value, and ignorance of the area below the surface. 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.” Is it
possible to have compassion if one does not understand the issues that lie beneath the
surface?
8. Hopelessness: The father‟s failure to provide for his family lead to hopelessness and
longsuffering. “I got nothing for you, nothing, nothing.” (p.233) Miss Lottie‟s hope
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disappears after Lizabeth destroys her marigolds and she never plants marigolds again. She is
resigned to live her life in her place of utter squalor and hopelessness.
Record your own notes: thoughts, questions, other instances of “issues” in this story. Additional
space on page at the end of this section.
Experience
Questions designed as a bridge between the reader’s lived-life and the story.
1. What kinds of realities are generally hidden from children? Why?
2. What memories from your childhood or adolescence are critical to your understanding of
how the world works? Of your sense of yourself in relation to other people?
3. Do you remember doing something that you regret? What did you learn from the
experience?
4. Did you know someone like Miss Lottie, someone who was an easy mark for the children
of your neighborhood, when growing up? Why was that person selected for harassment?
As an adult, how do you feel about how this vulnerable person was treated?
5. What is the connection between poverty, hopelessness, and destruction?
6. When the narrator says “the image of those passionate yellow mounds returns with a
painful poignancy,” she is indicating the long-lasting effect of this incident with Miss
Lottie‟s marigolds. What impact does the past have on your present perceptions?
7. Have you planted any “marigolds” in your life? Explain.
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of experience, etc. Additional space on page at
end of this section.
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Coordinator Notes
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of poetics, tensions/contrasts, shadows, issues,
experience, possible discussion paths, questions you might consider.
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DISCUSSION PATHS
Introducing the story
before reading the story, you might want to:
1. Share biographical information about Eugenia Collier.
2. Invite participants to think about an incident in their childhood that is memorable to
them. Ask them to consider the impact that the incident – or the memory of that incident
– has had on their adult lives.
3. If you plan to conclude the session by inviting participants to write, you might offer
either of these prompts:
Write about something you regret doing in your childhood or adolescence. What
did you learn from the experience?
Can one have both innocence and compassion? Explain.
Select a quote from the story and write about what it means to you.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Poetics  P
Tensions/Contrasts  C Shadows  S
Issues  I Experience  E
______________________________________________________________________________
1. Memory/Childhood
“Memory is an abstract painting – it does not present things as they are, but rather as they
feel.” (p. 228)
P, C, E
How does one‟s memory color the actual events of the past? What impact do
emotion, time, and perspective have on one‟s memory?
What is your impression of the narrator‟s memory of this incident with Miss
Lottie? Would her account differ from that of her brother? Why or why not?
“I desperately pass away the time waiting for you, who will not come. I suppose that futile
waiting was the sorrowful background music of our impoverished little community when I
was young.” (p. 228)
P, C ,S
What/who is the narrator waiting for? Why won‟t the expected come?
What‟s the connection to the waiting she remembers from childhood?
Explain the phrase “the sorrowful background music of our impoverished little
community.”
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2. Poverty/Destruction
“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.” (p. 229)
P, I, C
Why does the narrator use this image? How are poor people trapped in a “cage”?
What was the children‟s perception of their lot in life? When did Lizabeth first
understand the pain of poverty?
“Perhaps we had some dim notion of what we were, and how little chance we had of
being anything else. Otherwise, why would we be so preoccupied with destruction?”
(p.232)
I ,E
Why didn‟t the children have a chance to escape the poverty of their
surroundings? What would give the children a “dim notion” of their lot in life?
What‟s the connection between the repression felt by the children and their
propensity for destruction?
3. Marigolds
“For some perverse reason, we children hated those marigolds. They interfered with the
perfect ugliness of the place; they were too beautiful; they said too much that we could
not understand; they did not make sense.” (p. 231)
I, S
Why did the children “hate the marigolds”?
Can something be “too beautiful”? Explain.
What was it that the marigolds “said” that the children could not understand?
4. Coming of Age
“I did not join the merriment when the kids gathered again under the oak in our bare
yard. Suddenly 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 me flinched at the thought of the malicious
attack that I had led.” (p. 233)
I,E
Lizabeth does not join the “kids” in celebrating their harassment of Miss Lottie,
and then she expressed shame. Why?
What‟s the difference between the way the “child” in her acted and the “woman”
in her responded? What‟s happening here?
How does “shame” indicate a growth in one‟s understanding of other people?
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5. Disruption of innocence
“The world had lost its boundary lines…Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a
broken accordion.” (p. 234)
P, I
Why is Lizabeth so lost? What has changed in her perception of the world?
What were her “boundary lines” before hearing her father‟s cries?
“I had indeed lost my mind, for 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; the fear unleashed by my father‟s tears.” (p. 235)
I, T ,E
Are these issues the cause of Lizabeth‟s fury and destructive act? Why or why
not?
What does she understand about her actions once she gains the perspective of
age?
What impact has poverty had on Lizabeth‟s family? Why is her father so upset?
What new role does her mother have to take? What lasting problems could be
caused by sending younger children to live with other family members?
What do you remember about life as a child that had a lasting impact on you?
“…As I gazed at the immobile face with the sad, weary eyes, I gazed upon a kind of
reality which is hidden to childhood.” (p. 235)
C, E
What “reality” is Lizabeth referring to?
What kinds of realities are hidden from children? Why?
How does this experience – of seeing Miss Lottie as a victim of her violence –
change the way Lizabeth sees herself?
6. Miss Lottie
“Whatever verve was left in her, whatever was of love and beauty and joy that had not
been squeezed out by life had been there in the marigolds she had so tenderly cared for.”
(p. 235)
P, S
Why did Miss Lottie plant the marigolds? What does it mean about her approach
to the hard life she had?
What do the marigolds represent to Miss Lottie?
7. Innocence vs. compassion
“Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the
area below the surface. 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
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both compassion and innocence.” (p. 236)
I ,S, E
Can one have “both compassion and innocence”? What does this mean?
How does this statement describe Lizabeth‟s transformation from child to adult?
8. Story’s end
“And I, too, have planted marigolds.”
P, I, E
What does the author imply in this last line of the story?
What are the “marigolds” mentioned here?
What‟s the message about the importance of “marigolds” in the lives of adults
dealing with the real world?
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Final Impressions
After the session, take some time to make notes about the discussion: interesting points that
readers raised, questions that arose, disputes, and confusions. Jot down your own impressions of
the session: what worked well; what would you do differently the next time?
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SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
Maya Angelou - I know why the caged bird sings
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
________________________________
From the story: “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.”
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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Books written by Collier:
Beyond the Crossroad. Baltimore: Three Sistahs Press, 2009.
Breeder and Other Stories. Black Classic Press, 1993.
Anthologies including Collier's work:
Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women's Writers, edited by Joanne Veal
Gabbin. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.
Books by others:
God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island,
Georgia. by Cornelia Walker Bailey. New York: Anchor Books, 2000.
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