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 . . .
