Comparing Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums And In Another Country

Disillusionment of Man is the realization that the world is a dark and unfair place. This theme was pretty centralized to the post-modernism era which started in the early 1900’s and ended in the early 2000’s. The Chrysanthemums by Steinbeck and In Another Country by Hemingway are both examples of this theme. Both stories are alike but different in some ways. The Chrysanthemums is about a woman named Elisa is gardening before a date with her husband when a tinker arrives at her home. She is suspicious of him until he pretends to have interest in her chrysanthemums. After dropping her guard, she lets him repair some pots and pays him, giving him some chrysanthemums to take with him. The tinker leaves and after preparing for her date, on the way to town Elisa notices that the tinker had thrown out her flowers but kept the put she had put them in. …show more content…
There are four other soldiers also in the hospital that Nick is in. Nick tells the reader about the group’s routine and at the end of the story one of the soldiers seems to get very upset and Nick finds out that the soldier’s wife had died extremely suddenly after he had come home. Similarities between the two stories are fewer than the differences. Yes, both stories have disillusionment but the coming of this is very different. Elisa wishes that she could live a more free life like the tinker rather than being a stay-at-home life. After Elisa learns that the tinker had ditched her flowers she felt very betrayed, the interaction with the tinker had all been false. She has now realized that her life was seemingly endless and she was already “crying…-like an old woman”