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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Collier’s writing style in “Marigolds” includes the use of first-person narration, dialect, and poetic figurative language. In choosing to have Lizabeth act as a first-person narrator, Collier brings readers more closely into her experience, as they are not viewing the events of the story from afar. It is notable that Lizabeth is narrating the story from many years in the future. So, while the first-person account brings readers into the story, Lizabeth’s musings on how her memories from so many years ago are like “an abstract painting” to her now also creates some distance.
Collier also uses dialect throughout the story, meaning that whenever there is dialogue between characters, she tries to accurately capture how people in the working-class Black community in rural Maryland would have spoken in the 1930s (by changing her spelling and grammar).
Finally, Collier’s writing style is full of poetic descriptions and rich figurative language, as seen in the following passage (which comes after Lizabeth overhears her mother comforting her unemployed father):
The world had lost its boundary lines. My mother, who was small and soft, was now the strength of the family; my father, who was the rock on which the family had been built, was sobbing like the tiniest child. Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a broken accordion.
Collier’s descriptions of the world “losing its boundary lines” and of Lizabeth’s father being “the rock on which the family had been built” involve the use of metaphorical language in order to capture the emotions of the scene. Collier also uses two similes here, describing Lizabeth’s father “sobbing like the tiniest child” and everything being “out of tune, like a broken accordion.” Again, this figurative language helps readers to understand the emotional intensity of the scene, thereby helping them understand the painful effects of poverty and the Great Depression on this rural Black community.
Related Themes:
