12. What does Lizabeth learn from her last visit to Miss Lottie's? Cite evidence from the text to support

your answer.

Lottie began to look for the beauty amidst the ugly and lowly condition of life. She began to realize and look for elements of beauty in ugly, desperate and poor situations.

Explanation:

Eugenia W. Collier's Marigold tells the growing up / coming of age of the main protagonist Lizabeth and how she began to transition out of her childhood phase. It is a recollection of the speaker protagonist Lizabeth on her childhood days in Maryland during the Depression, specifically remembering "Miss Lottie's marigolds".

Lizabeth's last visit to the marigolds was after she realized that she no longer felt the same excitement and feeling of success unlike before. She rather felt ashamed and even thought she had done an awful thing. Later that night, after overhearing her parents' talk, she went to the marigold garden and wrecked it all, pulling "madly, trampling and pulling and destroying the perfect yellow blooms". This act, she regretted so much, "sitting in the ruined little garden among the uprooted and ruined flowers, crying and crying", too late to undo what she had done. It was then that that particular moment heralds a new phase, signifying "a loss of innocence".

This final scene provides her a new window, a new approach to life. It made her to look for the good, the beauty and the positive in situations that are negative, ugly, depressing or in poor conditions.