In "Marigolds" by Eugenia Collier, which key words and phrases best describe the conflict that Lizabeth faces?

This question is asking you to do two things. First, it is asking you to identify the specific conflict faced by Lizabeth in this short story. Secondly, it is asking you to study the author's choice of language to identify which particular words and phrases help convey this conflict most effectively.
Lizabeth and her family face a number of difficulties in "Marigolds." As a poor black family during the Great Depression, they struggle with generating enough income to feed the family, particularly because the father is out of work. The "impoverished" community and its difficulties is described using such words as "sorrowful," "depressed," "meager," and "futile." All of these adjectives convey the fact that the community is not only suffering from poverty, but also confined to that poverty—any attempt to escape it is "futile." Collier uses the metaphor of "the cage" to create a mental image of that poverty, entrapping an entire neighborhood like a physical entity.
The narrator, however, remembers not really registering the depth of this poverty until a "strange restlessness" began in her, the sign that "something...terrifying was beginning." This sense of internal chaos marks the "end of innocence" for the narrator. She returns to the metaphor of the cage to suggest that, although the moment of destroying Miss Lottie's marigolds marked a shift in her, the children might have been on some level aware of "how little chance" they had of emerging from their poverty and that this was the reason they were intent on destroying the beauty of the marigolds. This is a troubling and intriguing thought, made resonant by the reapplication of the earlier metaphor.
The conflict Lizabeth overhears between her parents is what truly sparks emotional turbulence in her. Note her father's language and the use of repetition underlying his sheer hopelessness: "I got nothing for you, nothing, nothing." Eventually, he breaks down, and Lizabeth notes, "I did not know men ever cried." This conveys the shock of the situation—her father's sobs are "harsh, painful, despairing," and this seems to contrast strikingly with what Lizabeth knows of her father. This event is so shocking to Lizabeth because it seems to subvert the natural order of things, as is conveyed in the phrase "the world had lost its boundary lines." Lizabeth feels intense internal conflict as she witnesses her "soft" mother become the strength of their family.
Look at the imagery here—Lizabeth's father had appeared to her as "the rock" which held the family, but now everything seems "out of tune, like a broken accordion." Lizabeth is unaware of where she fits into the world, and the sensory images help convey an impression of something discordant and frightening. Eventually, these feelings lead Lizabeth to feel an intense "aloneness" even after the argument between her parents is over: her emotions have "swelled...and burst," leaving her deeply aware of her "poverty and degradation" and of the fact that she no longer fits in the world of the child, and yet she is not old enough to become part of the adult world. Lizabeth is untethered, afloat in the "fear unleashed by [her] father's tears."