The theme developed in both stories which represents a life lesson, and coincides in Marigolds” and “First Love”, deals with the meaning of emapthy and love while we are growing up. In a general sense, empathy is defined as the human ability to understand and share the feelings of another while love is an intense feeling of deeper affection. These two feelings are brought to light by the authors of both stories in different ways and, through their main female characters whose ages are before their adulthood.
When comparing the stories, the plots used by the authors coincide in two important items. The first one is the age of the main female characters who are in the childhood and, the second is that they believe that empathy means to love someone. While the main character of Marigolds thinks that destroying Miss Dottie’s marigolds symbolizes the antipathy, felt by the rest of her friends, to this lady; the main character of First love believes that the first empathy kiss received from an elder man means He is in love with her. The conflict of both stories is solved at the end, when the females regret the things they did during their childhood.
In Marigolds, she regrets her behavior, stating:
“In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion”
In First love: she recgnized how mistaken and innocent she had been to think that the boy was deeply in love with her, she stops to be a child.
