Question

What "cage" did Lizabeth realize that her and her childhood companions were trapped in during the Great Depression? How did this "cage" limit Lizabeth and her companions, and how did they react to it as children?

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

What "cage" did Lizabeth realize that her and her childhood companions were trapped in during the Great Depression?

Lizabeth is a character is Eugenia Collier's short story "Marigolds", set during the Great Depression. According to Lizabeth, who is also the narrator of the story, the cage in which she and the other children in story were trapped was poverty.

How did this "cage" limit Lizabeth and her companions, and how did they react to it as children?

Lizabeth says poverty is a cage because it limits her and her companions. They know, unconsciously, that they will never grow out of it, that they will never be anything else other than very poor. However, since they cannot understand that consciously yet, the children and Lizabeth react to that reality with destruction. They channel their inner frustrations, project their anger outwards - more specifically, they destroy Miss Lottie's garden of marigolds.

"I said before that we children were not  consciously aware of how thick were the bars of our  cage. I wonder now, though, whether we were not  more aware of it than I thought. Perhaps we had some  dim notion of what we were, and how little chance we  had of being anything else. Otherwise, why would we  have been so preoccupied with destruction? Anyway,  the pebbles were collected quickly, and everybody  looked at me to begin the fun."