The Chrysanthemums | A Kind of Play: Dramatic Elements in Steinbeck's 'The Chrysanthemums"
In the following essay, Ditsky likens ‘‘The Chrysanthemums" to a stage drama, exploring in detail many of its dramatic elements.
The long-standing critical assumption, routinely delivered and seldom questioned, that John Steinbeck represented an odd late flourishing of literary naturalism—rather than, as now seems increasingly clear, an innovative sort of romanticism—has had the predictable effect of retarding appreciation of his accomplishments. Among the latter are the ways in which Steinbeck's language emerges from his contexts: arises organically but not necessarily with "real-life" verisimilitude from situations which must therefore be seen as having demanded, and in a sense therefore also created, a...
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