Chrysanthemums
The society of the United States is, and has always been, one that is highly and heavily patriarchal. Males are the gender that is in charge and women are expected and indeed required to accept this as fact. Their gender necessitates submission and dominion by their male counterparts. omen who strive for power in this society are meant to feel as though they are somehow very wrong because they want something that is supposed to be allowed only to the opposite gender. A woman was always made subordinate to her husband. This is the case at the center of the marriage between Henry and Elisa Allen. Throughout their union, he has been the lead and she has followed him, like a proper dutiful housewife should. At the age of 35, she has little life to call her own; no children and no power in the union. All she has are….

Chrysanthemums and Young Goodman rown
Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1835 short story "Young Goodman rown" and John Steinbeck's 1938 short story "The Chrysantemums" both deal with female purity and with how it can be easily tainted by temptation. Faith, the protagonist's wife in "Young Goodman rown" is initially shown advising the main character against performing immoralities. Similarly, Elisa, the central character in "The Chrysantemums," is presented in the first part of the story as an innocent country woman that is solely interested in her gardening. It is very probable that the two authors used women and their frailty as a main concept in their stories with the purpose of emphasizing more general ideas related to society and to how it can be influenced by matters that are seemingly unthreatening. oth women are somewhat stereotypical characters resembling women in the 1830s, and, respectively, in the 1930s.

Even though Hawthorne's story is meant to reference religious….

As Elisa expresses it, "When the night is dark -- why, the stars are sharp-pointed, and there's quiet. Why, you rise up and up! Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It's like that. Hot and sharp and -- lovely" (par. 73). The open night sky, in contrast to the lid of fog that sits on Elisa now, is felt as a release or a joining of energies, and the fulfillment of the anticipation now felt, and this scene puts Elisa at the height of her internal awareness.
She acknowledges this awareness explicitly when she tells her husband, "I'm strong…I never knew before how strong" (par. 93). A short time later, however, when she and her husband have passed the wagon on their way to dinner and she realizes that she will not really fulfill her desire or her potential in the wider world, she begins,: crying weakly --….

Chrysanthemums
John Steinbeck's famed short story, "The Chrysanthemums," was published in Harper's Magazine in 1937. This story is quite vigorously argued to be Steinbeck's best short story, as well as a piece that outshines and does not belong to his remaining body of work. "The Chrysanthemums has been called John Steinbeck's best short fiction, and some rank it with the world's greatest short stories." (Haggstrom, Page 1) He wrote the story just a few years before the United States entered World War II. During this period in America, a great deal of the male population was occupied, mostly abroad, with military activities. Stateside, women picked up a great deal of the industrial and domestic slack while the men fought the second great war. Prior to this period, women lived the traditional experience of confinement, restriction, and social internment.

The Allen ranch in his short story is set Salinas Valley, California, a….

In effect, he is throwing her away carelessly, just as he threw the flowers away on the side of the road. Therefore, they represent Elisa herself too, and the wants and dreams that have already died in her own life. She is not a happy person, she has many desires and dreams that are unfulfilled, and her husband really does not recognize that. The chrysanthemums are also a symbol of her longing for freedom and what might happen if she actually broke away. She gives the chrysanthemums their freedom when she shares them with the tinsmith. Steinbeck writes, "Her lips moved silently, forming the words 'Good-bye -- good-bye'" (Steinbeck), and this shows how much she cares about her flowers and the life they symbolize. The tinsmith just throws them away, and so he is saying that what she shared is not important. It was extremely important to her, and….

Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck, and "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather. Specifically, it will discuss a thematic connection between the two stories. These two short stories highlight the themes of loneliness, unfulfilled desires, and dreams. Both main characters have dreams of something better that are never realized, and they live tragic and unfulfilled lives because of this. These stories might not seem related, but underneath two very different characters lays the same basic problem - a dreamer's soul that is unfulfilled and desperately unhappy with real life.
Themes in Two elated Short Stories

These two short stories seem totally unrelated at first glance, but underlying two very different characters is a common theme of dreams, unfulfilled desires, and loneliness. Paul in "Paul's Case" is a lonely and misunderstood boy whose only joys are the theatre and the arts. He loves to watch performances, it is the only time he feels entirely alive.….

Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck [...] theme of the story, and how it relates to the story's conflict and outcome. Steinbeck weaves the theme of loneliness and isolation throughout this touching story of a lonely woman and her unfulfilled life. The outcome of the story is as unemotional and removed as Elisa's life is, and so, it is clear her life will go on just as it has, she is not the type of woman to really strike out on her own.
In "The Chrysanthemums," Elisa Allen is a lonely and unfulfilled woman who has dreams of a far different life. She truly covets the tinker's independence and his power to simply pick up and move where he wants when he wants. She wistfully tells the tinker, "It must be nice,' she said. 'It must be very nice. I wish women could do such things'" (Steinbeck 182). This theme of loneliness….

At the same time, iesel suggests that the persistence of hope prevails, and that holding onto positive memories and traditions can help the human spirit conquer all the evil in the world. "The atch" is chosen as a passage in a high school literature book because doing so reflects the author's ultimate goal: illustrating how history repeats itself unless we remain vigilant and always cognizant of the past. To remind high school students of the holocaust is to encourage dialogue. The audience for "The atch" is universal.
3. Randall Jarrell's "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"

Jarrell's poem "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" uses symbolism and imagery to convey war and death. The poem juxtaposes images of birth and death, as he describes his "mother's sleep" and being "hunched in the belly" before discussing the "black flak" and his own death. Juxtaposition is also used with the terms….

"She relaxed limply in the seat. "Oh, no. No. I don't want to go. I'm sure I don't." Her face was turned away from him. "It will be enough if we can have wine. It will be plenty." She turned up her coat collar so he could not see that she was crying weakly -- like an old woman" (Steinbeck).
There are a number of fairly eminent points to be made about this quotation -- the first of which is that Allen's husband has taken her away from her source of power -- her garden. Away from that source, she is described by imagery that is rather enervating and in opposition to the vivacity she previously personified. The imagery of her sitting "limply" and weeping "weakly" is strongly contrasted with the images of her cutting through plants and powerfully gripping handfuls of earth -- which symbolizes the source of her….

" His use of alcohol only enforces his incapability to distinguish between what is real and what is memory. It seems as though every stop represents a moment in Ned's life that he chose to ignore, oblivious to the fact that it might interfere and disturb the course of life. He does not recognize what people are telling him, nor does he find himself on the same length with them, and he feels the journey has exhausted him more than he expected. As he finally reaches his home, he is bewildered not to find anything nor anyone there, as if the house were deserted. This is what constitutes the reality of the story, that Ned's life had been broken down by his incapacity to change his demeanor and to realize what was really going on. That people were reminding him of financial issues, that he seemed to like alcohol a….

Elisa Allen is the protagonist of John Steinbeck's short story “The Chrysanthemums,” and Louise Mallard is the protagonist of Kate Chopin's “The Story of An Hour.” Both Elisa and Louise are products of their social and historical contexts, particularly when it comes to gender norms. Elisa and Louise are passive protagonists, because patriarchy has stripped them of political agency. By creating passive protagonists in their respective short stories, Steinbeck and Chopin make powerful social commentary about the role of women in their private and public lives.
Both Elisa and Louise feel stuck in their marriage, but perceive liberation as impossible within the confines of their culture. In both short stories, nature symbolizes wasted potential. For example, Elisa is capable of so much more than gardening: "The chrysanthemum stems seemed too small and easy for her energy," (Steinbeck). Similarly, Louise realizes that she has wasted her life when she sees nature through….

Both Elisa Allen and Goodman Brown suggest that sexual tension might be at the root of their conflict.
Allen arguably deals with her pain more constructively than Brown does. Brown becomes bitter as a result of the conflict he perceives in his heart. Moreover, Brown fails to ground himself in reality. Questioning whether or not the forest vision was real, Brown neglects to contemplate its value even as a dream. Learning that he does have longings to break free from the social conventions tying him down to the rigid and conformist Puritan society would have helped Brown come to terms with the Faith he does genuinely seek. Elisa cries but deep down knows that a simple dinner out with her husband is as much freedom as she can have while still savoring the joy of….

Bates to come home, there is a battle between light and dark, heat and cold. These are powerfully suggestive symbols of good and bad. Entering the scene, "the kitchen was small and full of firelight; red coals piled glowing up the chimney mouth. All the life of the room seemed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire" (Lawrence). The fire is a good indicator of the anger that burned inside Elizabeth as she expected, once again, for her husband to be late. Later in the scene however, the fire began to go out and become a dull red. Annie, Elizabeth's daughter, describes it as "beautiful," and "full of little caves -- and it feels so nice, and you can fair smell it" (Lawrence). The fire has become a source of warmth and pleasantness, it is beautiful and it is good. As the coals….

One of Wright's major works was Black Boy and one of the most poignant sections of that book was Chapter 12 in which Wright described the experiences of two southern black boys exploited by the "five dollar fight." Working for an optician in Memphis, Tennessee, the protagonist (Richard) hopes that his experiences with white people in Memphis will be better than in the small town of Jackson, Mississippi "The people of Memphis had an air of relative urbanity that took some of the sharpness off the attitude of whites toward Negroes & #8230;"

However, Richard finds that white people are just as exploitative and abusive of blacks in the big city as in small towns. Some of the white men where Richard works pay another black boy a quarter at a time to let them kick him in his rear end and even when white men seem to be nice to….

Asian Museum Exhibit
The Museum of Asia and India (MIA) is proud to host the traveling exhibition of Art and Society in Japan and China: Floral epresentation through the Centuries. The exhibit will run for three months at the MIA before traveling to other venues across the globe in the two-year schedule. Museums in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Munich, New York, Nice, Oslo, Prague, San Francisco, Sydney, Toronto, and Zurich will play host to the special exhibit from November 2011 through May of 2012.

The exhibit provides glimpses into the impact of religion, philosophy, language, and culture on Asian art. With artistic grounding in writing as an art form, Chinese and Japanese art often includes the written word as a visual element in art. Often, the writing conveys a wise aphorism or a blessing that exists harmoniously with the subject of the art. The influence of Confucius in Asian art is often….