Who is Miss Lottie in the story marigolds

Lottie is an older woman and one of Lizabeth’s neighbors. She grows beautiful marigolds in front of her house. The children take pleasure in throwing rocks at her flowers, and they enjoy bothering her. age.

What type of character is Miss Lottie?

Miss Lottie is a static character. She does not change at all at the end. She stills loves her marigolds at the end as she did in the beginning.

What did Miss Lottie do in marigolds?

Miss Lottie is an old, poor, woman who lives with her disabled son and her marigolds. The kids were playing one day and decided to make fun of her and throw pebbles at her house, she got really angry and Lizabeth decided to throw more. After throwing pebbles, they called her an old witch.

What does Miss Lottie represent?

For Miss Lottie, the marigolds were a symbol of beauty and hope in an otherwise hopeless environment.

How does Lizabeth describe Miss Lottie?

Miss Lottie was a loner, odd, old, tired, poor, and had an invalid for a son. She had nothing else really to hold on to in life, but the flowers. Lizabeth did something worse than murder because she did not kill a human body; she destroyed the last vestiges of a tired soul.

What is unusual about Miss Lottie's marigolds?

What is unusual about Miss Lottie’s marigolds? Miss Lottie’s ugly, decaying property.

How old is Miss Lottie in marigolds?

Miss Lottie seemed to be at least a 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.

What does Lizabeth's reaction to seeing Miss Lottie reveal about her?

Lizabeth’s reaction to seeing Miss Lottie reveals that Miss Lottie was just trying to create beauty in the middle of darkness and sadness. This also reveals that Lizabeth must have been bottling up her feelings and she just got to her breaking point.

What do Miss Lottie and her marigolds symbolize to the narrator?

Miss Lottie and her marigolds symbolize to the narrator the little amount of happiness left in Miss Lottie’s life. … When the narrator says “I too have planted marigolds” at the end of the story she means she now lives her life by trying to find hope in the worse situations.

How would you describe Lizabeth or Miss Lottie in marigolds?

Over the course of the story, Lizabeth learns the difference between acting out and outright cruelty. Miss Lottie is a woman. She too, is living through the depression. Unlike Lizabeth, she uses her frustration to care for her marigolds…. the one thing in her life that is beautiful.

Article first time published on

Why does Miss Lottie work so hard in her garden?

Miss Lottie works hard in her garden because the flowers…. the new life and the beauty of their presence provide her with a sense of hope.

Is Miss Lottie the antagonist in this story?

At the beginning of the story, Miss Lottie, Lizabeth’s elderly neighbor, is framed as a kind of antagonist. An imposing, stern, elderly woman, Miss Lottie is the target of the neighborhood kids, who make a sport of taunting her, damaging her prized marigolds, and calling her a witch.

What is Lizabeth's motivation for taunting Miss Lottie?

What part do the “chaotic emotions of adolescence” (lines 17-18) play in motivating Lizabeth to taunt Miss Lottie? Lizabeth’s chaotic emotions of adolescence were what fueled her taunting of Miss Lottie.

Why did Lizabeth do what she did and why didn't Miss Lottie get angry about it?

Why did Lizabeth destroy the Marigolds? The night before she was very upset to hear her father cry and she realized how poor and hopeless her life was, so she wanted revenge, she was angry and took it out on Miss Lottie.

How does Lizabeth change in the moment she comes face to face with Miss Lottie?

After Lizabeth destroys the marigolds, she comes face to face with Miss Lotties. The moment Lizabeth looks into her face, she realizes her mistake when she sees true pain and destruction in Miss Lottie’s eyes.

What does Lizabeth learn in marigolds?

I think that Lizabeth learned that her childhood was over, “M-miss Lottie!” 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.

What is Lizabeth's reaction to her father crying?

The sound of her father’s crying makes Lizabeth feel that everything is “suddenly out of tune” and that the world has “lost its boundary lines.” Her usually strong father seems weak, and her mother becomes the “strength of the family.” It makes her feel confused about things she had previously taken as truths.

Is marigolds by Eugenia Collier a true story?

The story draws from Collier’s early life in rural Maryland during the Great Depression. … While teaching literature at the Community College of Baltimore County, she published “Marigolds” in Negro Digest, where it won the inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks prize for fiction; it was her first published story.

Why is Lizabeth so angry at Miss Lottie What does she do to show her anger?

Lizabeth is feeling guilty and upset so she returns to Miss Lottie’s. These feelings provoke her actions because she was feeling upset, confused, and hurt so she can’t control her rage. She feels this because she is in poverty, her mom is not comforting him, her father is crying, and she is still a child.

What does bravado mean in marigolds?

Bravado. A false show of courage or defiance. Degradation. Condition of being brought to a lower level; humiliation.

What is the main idea of the story Marigolds?

The main themes in “Marigolds” are coming of age, poverty and oppression, and memory and context. Coming of age: The story centers around the moment when Lizabeth moves from the innocence and thoughtlessness of childhood to the responsibility and compassion of adulthood.

What is the main theme of the story Marigolds?

In the story Marigolds, by Eugenia Collier, the reader discovers the theme is to be innocent is to be a child and in order for one to mature, they must become compassionate.

How does the narrator's understanding of Miss Lottie at the end of the story compare to her feelings about the woman at the beginning of the story?

How does the narrator’s understanding of Miss Lottie at the end of the story compare to her feelings about the woman at the beginning of the story? … The narrator is educated and no longer poor, but she is empty, lonely, and now sees herself as Miss Lottie.

Why does Elizabeth think Miss Lottie's marigolds look strange and out of place use supporting evidence from paragraph 22 in your response?

This is because Miss. Lottie’s house looks old and dilapidated.

What does destroying the marigolds mean to Lizabeth?

Lizabeth was so upset by her own life and her father’s tears that she became angry and confused. In her confusion, she chooses to let out her own anger by destroying something, the marogolds, because they were precious to Miss Lottie.

Why do the children go to Miss Lottie's house in marigolds?

Terms in this set (26) Why is Lizbeth’s father sad? Why does Lizbeth go to Miss Lottie’s house at 4 in the morning? … She needs her mother but her mom is never home, hopelessness of poverty and degradation, bewilderment of being neither child nor woman, yet both at once, and fear unleashed by her father’s tears.

What did Miss Lottie plant in front of her house?

What was always fun? T or F ; Year after year, Miss Lottie weeded and arranged her marigolds while her house crumbled away, and John Burke rocked in the rocking chair on the porch. T or F ; Kids were all the time trying to destroy Miss Lottie’s marigolds.

How old is Lizabeth in marigolds?

The crisis of Marigolds, by Eugenia Collier, is that Lizabeth, a 14 year old African American girl, doesn’t know who she is. The conflict of the story involves Lizabeth trying to find out who she is while growing up in a poor Maryland society during the Great Depression.

How does Lizabeth's character develop in marigolds?

How does Lizabeth’s character develop in “Marigolds”? Lizabeth recognizes that she needs to escape the environment in which she grew up. Lizabeth evolves from being a violent person to being a pacifist. Lizabeth moves from innocence and ignorance to knowledge and compassion.

What did Lizabeth do at Miss Lottie's house?

One day, Lizabeth, her brother, and some neighborhood kids decide to throw stones at Miss Lottie’s marigolds to pass the time. Afterward, as Lizabeth is ashamed and unable to sleep, she overhears her father crying because he cannot provide for his family.

What might explain the children's reactions to the marigolds?

The children were simply being bored and obnoxious….. they had no beauty in their lives, so they decided to take the beauty away from Miss Lottie’s.