Character Analysis: Some Yellow Chrysanthemums

Elisa Allen is a farm worker that is able to grow chrysanthemums really well and everyone that saw them could tell you about them, but the thing is that she lives on a ranch in the mountains. She lives on the ranch with her husband Henry Allen and both love working on the farm. Her husband could tell she has a talent for growing the chrysanthemums so well. He would comment on her work and that would make her happy. ““You’ve got a gift with things,” Henry observed. “Some Yellow chrysanthemums you had this this year were ten inches across. I wish you’d work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big”” (Steinbeck). I am not sure if chrysanthemums are hard to grow, but for Mrs. Allen it seems like she enjoys working with them and the rest of her garden.

The valley is a gloomy place in the morning because of all of the fog there is covering the sun: “The high gray-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world” (Steinbeck). Living in the Salinas Valley the people feel isolated from the rest of the world because people are not able to see what is beyond the mountains. Especially when the winter fog comes around and covers pretty much everything making it even more difficult for the farmers to enjoy the view: “On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valet a closed pot” (Steinbeck). The fog made everything dark and unenjoyable, closes them in from the rest of the world. In December there is no sunshine, so that left me wondering how the chrysanthemums grew so well. The house is on a foothill ranch in the valley, it is not all alone because there is other farms or ranches in