The end of childhood innocence is a significant part of the transition to adulthood. This is illustrated in “Marigolds,” a short story written by Eugenia Collier, set in a small town trapped in poverty during the Great Depression. The protagonist Lizabeth is a fourteen-year-old girl who is playing with her brother and neighborhood friends and as a child when she simultaneously encounters an experience that teaches her compassion, which ultimately helps her enter adulthood. Through Lizabeth's childhood experience, Collier describes how maturity is based on compassion and overcoming the innocence of childhood. By virtue of their innocence, the children of “Marigolds” are cruel. Lizabeth explains how there is “…no radio, few newspapers and no magazines” (76). Therefore the children are not aware of the poverty in which they live. They have no knowledge of what is happening in the world and are only exposed to what is around them. They live their lives normally, doing their chores, playing and running around like any child would. One day, the children are bored and ...