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“Marigolds” Close reading The story begins with this line: “When I think of the hometown of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet.” 1. What does the dust symbolize? What kind of place is the setting of this story? She goes on and says, “Memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are, but rather as they feel.” 2. What does this mean?
There is one thing that is different, that stands out in the shantytown the narrator describes. 3. What is it? Find where she states this.On the first page, first column, the narrator describes her feelings that summer, “chaotic emotions of adolescence, illusive as smoke, yet as real as the potted geranium before me now. Joy and rage and wild animal gladness and shame become tangled together in the multicolored skein of 14-going-on-15 as I recall that devastating moment when I was suddenly more woman than child.”4. The narrator uses both similes and metaphors in this passage. What are they?5. What other information do we get about the narrator in this passage?
6. Does the depression affect the people in the community where the narrator is growing up? Explain.7. What were they waiting for?8. Were the children aware of their poverty?
