SOURCE: “‘The Chrysanthemums’: Waiting for Rain,” in John Steinbeck's Re-vision of America, The University of Georgia Press, 1985, pp. 108–13.

In the following essay, Owens correlates Elisa Allen's desire for rain with her need for personal fulfillment.

Of the first story in The Long Valley, “The Chrysanthemums,” Steinbeck wrote: “It is entirely different and is designed to strike without the reader's knowledge. I mean he reads it casually and after it is finished feels that something profound has happened to him although he does not know what nor how” (Life in Letters, p. 91). In light of the eagerness with which critics have rushed to praise this story, calling it “Steinbeck's most artistically successful story,” and “one of the world's great short stories,”¹ it seems that most critics would agree that “something profound” happens in “The Chrysanthemums.” And the great difficulty critics have encountered when trying to explain the “what” and...