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Hopelessness may lead to anger.
The narrator of “Marigolds” says that as a girl, she and other children in her community are “only vaguely aware” of their poverty. They feel “trapped” but do not understand their abstract anger and hatred of the “cage” of poverty. The adult narrator understands these feelings all too well and explains them as a lack of opportunity, or even of the hope of future opportunity “as the American Dream promised,” that the people in the community feel daily.
Lizabeth’s parents, of course, understand the “futile waiting” of poverty in ways the children cannot. The conversation Lizabeth overhears in which her father first complains bitterly and then weeps in weak frustration helps her define the urge toward destruction that even the children feel. Her father cannot act out this anger, but the children, and especially Lizabeth, can.
Anger underlies the children’s harassment and vandalism in “Marigolds.” Lizabeth describes the “vague, undirected restlessness” that the impoverished children feel but cannot articulate, and she senses that they hate the flowers because their beauty is so out of keeping with the dust, dirt, hunger, and boredom the children feel daily. Lizabeth herself acts in violent anger when she tears up the flowerbed, but readers know that beneath her anger and desire to destroy is the fear that overwhelms her when she hears her father cry. His grief and shame shatter her childhood innocence, but she is still young enough to express her fear through violent, angry behavior. The story suggests that poverty and lack of opportunity are the soil in which explosive anger may rise from hopelessness and despair.
Work can be a source of dignity and identity.
The story is set during the Great Depression and, for the children, at the end of summer’s idleness. This setting helps emphasize the significance of work. Not all work, under all conditions, the story suggests, is beneficial. In fact, Lizabeth recalls that the people in her community did not expect hard work to pay off. Because they work in depressed conditions for discriminatory employers, they “labor in the white man’s vineyard,” exchanging their sweat for a “meager share of bread.” Others profit from their labor, and they feel the unfairness of the situation.
But not to have work or to be able to provide for children, is worse. Lizabeth’s parents had to send two of their babies to relatives who could feed them. The narrator states this terrible reality in such a matter-of-fact tone that readers may wonder if Lizabeth could not find words to express the pain her parents must feel. She herself feels “the great need for my mother who was never there,” who was unable to care for her own home and children while being paid to care for someone else’s. For men in this cultural setting, the pain of not being able to provide is acute. “It ain’t right,” Lizabeth’s father protests. “What must a man do, tell me that?” he begs before collapsing into sobs. Lizabeth cannot comprehend his pain, but she understands that without work, her father has lost or at least doubts his identity as “the rock on which the family had been built.” The shock Lizabeth feels when she realizes that her hard-working parents cannot protect her from hopelessness drives her destruction of the marigolds and the hope they embody. Ironically, tending the flowers is the work that has for years given Miss Lottie dignity and identity.
Hindsight and recollection can lead to self-knowledge and compassion.
“Marigolds” is a coming-of-age story that recalls the transition from childhood’s sheltered comprehension of human experience to the more nuanced understanding of adulthood. Because the narrator looks back across some number of years, the story demonstrates how honest reflection can lead to self-knowledge. This kind of reflection is not typical for children or even adolescents because it requires the perspective of time.
As the narrator recalls the marigolds and explains the events that led to their destruction, she brings a mature understanding and an ability to put into words the emotions and reactions that confused her when they happened. She knows that her memories are subjective. If they were objective, what her younger self thought and felt could not be parsed. Her retelling of events emphasizes the internal conflict provoked by external events beyond her control. And while she could not understand her “violent, crazy act” then, as she looks back, she realizes that she can feel remorse while also holding space for understanding and forgiveness for the overwhelmed teen, “neither child nor woman and yet both at once.” Compassion for her younger self and compassion for an old, stunned woman standing among her broken flowers are both outcomes of a willingness to look back in honest reflection.
