Symbols of Steinbeck’s Social Commentary Essays -- Literary Analysis

People in the 1930s were fighting a losing battle with themselves. They were sexual climax a depression, facing the eyes of war, and trying to stay on their feet with what junior-grade resources they had. Most were farmers and made a living by manual labor. The mass of what they owned, they made themselves. Such is the setting in John Steinbecks 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 diametrical light. Instead of focusing on technicalities, he focused on what the center of America was going throughthe 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 ships company associated with each. Elisa Allen lives a peaceful life, but is fighting a continual battle with the prejudicial, parental society against her as a female. As Kenneth Kempton, designer of brief 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 ship 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 mayhap impotent husband, or merely her lost youth as implied at the end, Elisa is struggling inwardly. Beginning with a detailed rendering of the Salinas River Valley, which is enclosed in fog like a pot, the physical environs echo Elisas lifestyle. In fact, the chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and abstemious 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 Elisas chrysanthemums on the side of the road. Opportunity, although presented to eac h of the characters, was never fully grasped, and so it remained, that fog and rainwater did not go together. Works CitedKempton, Kenneth Payson. Objectivity as Approach. Short Stories for Study. Cambridge Mass. Harvard UP, 1953. 120-24. Print. Palmerino, Gregory J. Steinbecks 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.