“Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier is the memoir of a black girl living during the Great Depression. The story does not focus on the problems that society presents to the narrator (Elizabeth), but rather on the conflict within her. Collier uses marigolds to show that the changes from childhood to adulthood cause fear in Elizabeth, which is the enemy of compassion and hope. “Marigolds” is about change. Collier chose a girl of "fourteen and fifteen" (1) because the transition from childhood to adulthood adds layers of conflict to the story. The initially evident conflict is that between the woman and the child inside Elizabeth. It represents the little girl when she tears the marigolds: “The fresh smell of the early morning and the dewy marigolds spurred me on as I went to tear, tear and sob” (5). She (as a child) internally struggles with the fact of being a woman. At the end of her rampage, she is “more woman than child” (1), and the child in her loses the battle. As a woman, she conquers “a type of reality hidden in childhood” (5). The second conflict is also symbolic. Elizabeth represents fear. He has a sense that “something old and familiar [is] ending and something unknown and therefore terrifying [is] beginning” (1). Marigolds represent hope. The reason for his “great impulse to destruction” (4) was a combination of fear for the future and bitterness towards the past. In this conflict, fear wins because Miss Lottie “never [plants] marigolds again” (5). The third conflict is the most important. It takes place within Elizabeth and is also between fear and hope. At the end of the story, fear can symbolically win, but inside Elizabeth wins: “In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion” (5). Collier not only uses age to create depth of conflict, but he also uses Elizabeth's attitude. The first conflict (the transition from childhood to adulthood) could stand on its own. If Collier had created an optimistic character he would not have allowed Elizabeth to struggle between fear and hope. By creating a pessimistic character, Collier shows that she is bitter and fearful. This is evident in his statement that his “hatred of [poverty] was still the vague and indirect restlessness of a zoo-bred flamingo who knows that nature created him to fly free.” (1).