Answer:
The main theme or message in the story "Marigolds" is the importance of empathy and compassion.
In the story, Lizabeth is reflecting on a crossroads in her life, an incident that marked the change from child to woman. She is apparently honest with readers in telling us how brutal and hostile she was on the day she attacked Miss Lottie verbally and then attacked her property.
Before the day she tore up the old lady's marigolds, she had not thought of Miss Lottie as a person. In fact, Lizabeth and her friends always used to yell, "Witch!" at the old lady. On that particular day, Lizabeth first took the leading role in yelling furiously at her, repeatedly calling her a witch. Later that day, she returned to her house and tore the marigolds out of the ground. Miss Lottie, however, did not yell at the girl; she just looked deeply sad and wondered why she did it. Lizabeth looked into the "sad, weary eyes" of another human being.
At the story's end, the adult Lizabeth explains the impact:
In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have both compassion and innocence . . .
The one that does not have a strong influence on the American English in the Late Modern English period was A. Separation from England. Late Modern English is from 1800-present. The changes in vocabulary in this time was due to industrial revolution as well as scientific advancements and colonialism as well.
The sentence in the above excerpt from "In Another Country" by Ernest Hemingway which is an example of irony is:
“You are a fortunate young man.”
The story "In Another Country" is about Hemingway's personal experiences in the Milanese hospital. He narrates the stories of the patients admitted with him after the end of the first World War. The story talks about the wounds which the war has given to them, apart from the physical pains. The wounded soldiers wanted to erase the ills and effects which the world war has given to the world. In the above excerpt, it is ironical that the doctor calls the football player 'a fortunate man' after his leg broke off.
