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“Marigolds” is written from the first-person point of view and with the benefit of hindsight. The first-person narrator is the adult Lizabeth who looks back to a particular summer and a pivotal day during that summer to narrate the events. Sometimes readers wonder if the “I” in a first-person narrative is the writer herself, or a fictionalized version of the author. This is not the case in “Marigolds.” The narrator is a fictional creation who looks back on her life to explain something about who she is now. The narrator of “Marigolds” weaves commentary from her mature perspective into her retelling of the terrible day of the marigold rampage.
Since many readers have had the experience of looking back at an event from childhood to understand it better, and perhaps experience some regret about their childish words and actions, the retrospective approach in the story makes the narrator relatable. It creates an authentic tone that allows Collier to weave the narrator’s introspective and somewhat melancholy voice throughout the story. Readers may feel invited into the narrator’s life, sharing memories that reveal painful, “humiliating” truths that she has come to understand. As always in stories told from first-person point of view, readers know only what the narrator knows about other characters in the story. The narrator must infer what Joey, or her parents, or Miss Lottie think and feel. But this limitation contributes to the narrator’s relatability, since it is what all people must do to live in families and communities.
