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Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Marigolds and Dust
Before readers learn about the marigolds, they read the narrator’s description of the dust. Lizabeth does not speak of dirt or soil, in which crops or trees might grow, but rather she speaks of dust that chokes, dust that makes the eyes itch and water, dust that creeps in everywhere and cannot be cleaned away. Dust evokes negative associations, such as the dust of disuse or the dust to which the living return after death. Lizabeth’s community is dying, drying up under the scorching sun of poverty. The dust that infiltrates all her childhood memories represents the stifling effects of poverty that discourage the adults so much that they keep going only by waiting for a miracle in a time when “God was stingy with miracles.”
The marigolds contrast with and counteract the dusty deadness of the community. They grow in golden abundance, are compared to sunlight, and are described with a word not usually applied to flowers or other inanimate objects—“passionate.” They are “suddenly and shockingly” bright. They seem to rise out of nowhere against the gray walls of the house; they dazzle; they are “perfect.” The flowers seem to embody all of what Lizabeth calls Miss Lottie’s “verve.” They are the result of her “love and beauty and joy,” poured into her over many summers, and they make her life worth living. In retrospect, the narrator realizes that the marigolds represent what her younger, fearful self so feared losing—the very things that do make life worth living and which she herself has “planted” in her adult life.
