Like Winnie of Tuck Everlasting, Elisa Allen of “The Chrysanthemums” yearns for freedom. Winnie’s escape was the frog in her front yard, and then the Tuck’s, especially Jessie. Elisa Allen did not have that chance for escape–the tinker in her story is the closest she could come to such an escape. Winnie, though much younger than Elisa, felt many of the same things. Elisa wanted freedom, she wanted to be strong. Winnie wanted freedom from her parents and from being looked at as simply a young girl; Elisa wanted freedom from her husband and from being looked at as simply a woman. However, the differences between Winnie and Elisa cannot be overlooked. Winnie is precocious, innocent, young girl. Elisa is decidedly a woman, and lacks the child-like nature of Winnie. …show more content…
After all, there was a whole romance in the movie that did not really appear in the book except for a brief mention of Winnie and Jessie getting married eventually. Ms. Babbitt’s writing has a flair for the descriptive unlike any I had seen before. It quickly became apparent why Tuck Everlasting has become such a popular piece of literature.
John Steinbeck, while having a different style of description than that of Ms. Babbitt, is also very talented at painting a picture in “The Chrysanthemums.” A few of my favorite descriptions he wrote are as follows:
“She brushed a cloud of hair out of her eyes with the back of her glove, and left a smudge of earth on her cheek in doing it” (p. 49).
“His eyes were dark, and they were full of the brooding that gets in the eyes of teamsters and of sailors” (p. 52). “‘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’” (p.