The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck - Research Paper Example

“The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck The story of “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck is a bittersweet story that discusses the meanings of life in comparison to the joys that have meaning. The protagonist of the story, Elisa, has a life that is defined by its lack of intimacy. She is married, but she and her husband are stiffly associated, their communications built upon a formality that keeps a barrier between them. It is suggested that this is because her husband does not truly understand her. A man comes along that seems to touch her, reaching into the core of what makes her feel alive and centered within the world. However, in the ends she sees that this is an illusion, an idea that is not real and has fallen apart as quickly as it grew. The story has a sorrowfulness that palpitates, a rhythm that builds, despite the short length of the story, that ends in the disappointment of seeing her dream dashed at the side of the road. For a moment, she is able to become her authentic self, her love and skill with the flowers empowering her sense of who she is, allowing her to express that person to her husband. The change is noticeable, making her more attractive to him, but as she sees the flowers she had given the wagon vender poured to the side of the road, leaving them dead and dashed, she is brought back to reality. This crescendo of the human spirit, with the drop down at the end, provides a sense of life, of the way in which people sometimes delude themselves in to believing that they are living an authentic life, but in reality, are only plodding along, waiting for something that is unlikely to come to them. George writes of Elisa that she “fails us as a woman” that her experience shows that she has not fulfilled the potential of the female gender (91). She has emasculated her husband, while at the same time having been in denial of her own power. She is asexual, not really expressing any desires and her feelings about sex are that she hasn’t participated in it for years. However, she “reveals her erotic potential” when and in the end she “has transformed her workaday self into a sex object that could as easily be the manipulative temptress as the docile toy” (George 91). The nature of her sexual female self is examined through her opening and closing off of that part of herself. She is emotionally awakened as she finds desire, but when she is humiliated, she closes down, shoving her husband out of her emotional life once more. The story opens up the concept of emotional, physical, moral and spiritual ‘entrapment’. It is through the interpretations of the reader that the connectivity between Elisa and her awareness of these traps that the heart of the story is motivated (George 92). There are many symbols that are used to create the nature of theses entrapments. One of those symbols is the river. The symbol of the river suggests the way out as it flows away. Water, in general, symbolizes many things within the story as her eyes are “as clear as water” suggesting an innocence. When she feels guilt, she uses hot water to clean it away, and there is a need for rain that is suggestive of something stale that needs to be nurtured (Tomberger, Dangl, and Fend 28). The setting of the story takes place in the Salinas Valley in California and is set in the mid 1930s. The nature of the atmosphere of the setting is that it has the feeling of oppression, that the world in which the characters lived was restrained. Steinbeck says “On every side [fog] sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot” (Williams 357). This tight, enclosed feeling is expressive of the oppression that fills the atmosphere. The way in which Elisa has lived her life has left her without the capacity to fill up the spaces with joy, so they press in on each other, filled with tension and keeping her separate from others, namely her husband, in her life. According to Steinbeck (1995), his work has been a study in the use of setting within the short story format. Rather than just a drop back, the nature of the setting is to inform on the character and theme, an innovation that can primarily be credited to Steinbeck. Steinbeck (1995) describes his works for their layers of meaning, defined more specifically as “patterns of implication“ (22). Steinbeck had during previous works been too heavy handed, his works not giving enough created to his reader and leading them too specifically where he intended to go with the symbolism and the rhetoric. However, in this story he begins to find a more subtle nature, creating a world in which the structures that he has place. While understanding his concepts through his setting is available, his works are further defined through the way in which the setting creates that oppression that is felt by the character. According to a review by The New Yorker, “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck, was “a bit too abrupt at the start (MacElrath, 1996, p. 137). This is a very true, the story jerks forward towards its dangerous middle where by the events begin to turn in on Elisa and define her position. Elisa is not searching, even in her desperate wantonness for the feelings of eroticism. When it finds her, she finds a bit of herself that she had either considered gone, or hidden, and it draws forth a strength that her husband clearly can see. However, Elisa cannot be that aware of it existing within her as it takes external forces to create the feeling. That she only had lustful feelings and did not give in to them provides the morality of the story, a side of redemption against the failures that Steinbeck is writing about within his work. The femaleness that has turned into the emptiness that is her life, the life she wishes to escape from, is the place in which she cannot withdraw from in order to become her best potential. Steinbeck uses a series of concepts of narrative in order to craft his story. The symbolisms that he uses for Elisa, objectify her within her experiences. She is not fully fleshed out but snippets of concepts in which the symbols represent the different was in which the narrative presents her to the reader (Bracken 494). According to Kordich, “the language is tightly controlled and relies on the declarative assertions provided by metaphors (e.g. “her terrier fingers“) and active verbs (e.g. “her eyes sharpened”). Steinbeck’s language is boiled down in the sense that it feels shorn of superfluous descriptions” (86). The writing is held back, representing much of the same natures of the central couple, thus providing further context for the narrative through creating settings that creates themes and characters that can be understood for the way they are held in context. Even in its sorrows, the story holds a sweetness that is shown to come alive when Eliza believes someone is finally understanding her passions. It is not in feeling that she is unable to be passionate, but in the central message that her passions have been dismissed that Eliza’s predicament has been revealed. She fails to do what she should do as a female because she has been failed, her nature defined by the rate at which she has been represented for those failures. While that sweetness sustains the reader through till the bitterness of the revelation of its falsehood, that bitterness is a hard pill to take. As she sees that she has been made a fool, that the attention that she has responded to has not been about herself and her flowers, but about the ability she had to provide him with a job. In other words, she is used. The evidence of her ’foolishness’ is on the side of the road, the perpetrator of it not kind enough to hide the evidence of his falsehoods. The story could be interpreted as the man having fooled her to gain her interest, rather than to only gain coin from her. However, that interpretation is not really where Steinbeck leads his readers. Steinbeck wants his readers to understand his vision, to see the despair with which the life in which Eliza has had to endure is not the life that she would have wondered. She wants to have the freedoms that the different aspects of the story suggest, but she is dutiful and stays with her husband, leading the life that she chooses to accept. She retains her ability to show the side her husband craves, taking this from him as if to punish him for not being all she had hoped. However, she is punished in this as well. The story “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck is built on skillfully crafted setting that evokes a feeling of oppression. The symbols in the work provide a context for understanding the protagonist, Eliza, who is dissatisfied with her life. When she thinks she had met someone who is interested in something about her skills, connecting to a passion that she has developed, she opens up, budding and blooming through his attentions. However, when she sees the evidence of her betrayal, she sinks back into the oppressed state, her life shattered and her ability to maintain the effects shattered. What had been a moment of triumph is revealed for its shallow ends, the way in which she no longer has the courage to overcome what has pressed in on her existence. References Bracken, J. K. (1998). Reference works in British and American literature. Englewood, Colo: Libr. Unlimited. George, S. K. The moral philosophy of John Steinbeck. Lanham, Md. [u.a.: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Print. Kordich, C. J. Bloom's how to write about John Steinbeck. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 2008. Print. MacElrath, J. R. John Steinbeck: The contemporary reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996. Print. Steinbeck, J. The long valley. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Print. Steinbeck. “The Chrysanthemums”. In Crane, M. 50 great short stories. New York: Bantam Books, 1997. Print. Tomberger, M., Dangl, C., & Fend, K. Feminist, phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches to "The Chrysanthemums" by John Ernst Steinbeck. Munich: Verlag, 2007. Print. Williams, James D. The LEA Guide to Composition. Mahwah, NJ: Taylor and Francis, Inc, 2009. Print. Read More