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The Chrysanthemums

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Submitted By skye082793
Words 1064
Pages 5
Skye Meadows
EGL 102-09
John Steinbeck's short story "The Chrysanthemums" is about a proud, vigorous woman named Elisa Allen who feels frustrated with her present life. Like Elisa, the chrysanthemums are beautiful, vigorous, and flourishing. Their flowerbed, like Elisa’s home, is neat, orderly and scrupulously authoritatively mandated. Elisa specifically identifies herself with the blossoms, even verbally expressing that she becomes one with the plants when she inclines to them. When the tinker descries the chrysanthemums, Elisa visibly brightens, just as if he had descried her rather than the chrysanthemums. She offers the chrysanthemums to him at the same time she offers herself, both of which he disregards and tosses aside. His repudiation of the flowers additionally mimics the way society has abnegated women as nothing more than mothers and housekeepers. Just like her, the flowers are unobjectionable and additionally nonessential: both are merely decorative and integrate little worth to the world.
First, the chrysanthemums denote Elisa’s young children. She is always in her garden and manages the chrysanthemums with love and care, just as she would handle her own children. Elisa is very protective of her blossoms and puts a cable barrier around them; she ascertains "no aphids, no sowbugs or snails or cutworms" are there. "Her terrier fingers destroy such pests afore they can get commenced" ().These pests represent natural harm to the blossoms, and, just as any good mother she abstracts them before they can damage her children. The chrysanthemums are symbolic of her children and she is very proud of them. When Elisa's husband compliments her on her flowers, she is proud, and "on her face there is a little smugness"(). She is jubilant and excited by her ability to nurture these comely flowers. Elisa’s dignity in her proficiency to grow such beautiful and divine

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