People in the 1930s were fighting a losing battle with themselves. They were approaching a depression, facing the eyes of war, and trying to stay on their feet with what little resources they had. Most were farmers and made a living by manual labor. The majority of what they owned, they made themselves. Such is the setting in John Steinbeck’s critically acclaimed short story “The Chrysanthemums”. In this story, Steinbeck set out to paint a portrait of what the conditions of the people were really like, but in a different light. Instead of focusing on technicalities, he focused on what the heart of America was going through—the struggles between what social standards expected and what individuals desired. In “The Chrysanthemums”, Steinbeck uses the characters Elisa Allen, the Tinker, and Henry Allen to exemplify the different personas of the time, and to reveal certain truths of society associated with each.Elisa Allen lives a peaceful life, but is fighting a constant battle with the prejudicial, parental society against her as a female. As Kenneth Kempton, author of Short Stories for Study, notes, “whether it is freedom suggested by the nomadic life of the tinker, or children symbolized by her care of the young plants, or manliness as indicated by her delight in her strength and her masochist scrubbing of her body in the bath, or a normal sex life hinted at by her tenseness with when with her possibly impotent husband, or merely her lost youth as implied at the end”, Elisa is struggling inwardly. Beginning with a detailed description of the Salinas River Valley, which is enclosed in fog like a pot, the physical surroundings echo Elisa’s lifestyle. In fact, “the chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her ene…
…n the “bright direction” of the Tinker. Had the Tinker been better able to support himself, perhaps he would not have had to throw Elisa’s chrysanthemums on the side of the road. Opportunity, although presented to each of the characters, was never fully grasped, and so it remained, that “fog and rain did not go together”.
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Works CitedKempton, Kenneth Payson. “Objectivity as Approach.” Short Stories for Study. Cambridge [Mass.: Harvard UP, 1953. 120-24. Print.Palmerino, Gregory J. “Steinbeck’s THE CHRYSANTHEMUMS.” Rev. of “The Chrysanthemums” Explicator 62.3 (2004): 164-67. Literary Reference Center. Web.Price, Victoria. “The Chrysanthemums.” Masterplots. 4th ed. Pasadena, CA: Salem, 2011. 1-3. Print.Sheets-Nesbitt, Anna, ed. “The Chrysanthemums.” Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anja Barnard. Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale Group, 2000. 320-63. Print.
