The Chrysanthemums Dissatisfaction Quotes

These farmers, like all farmers, are at the mercy of the weather. The land won't produce, and their duties can't be fulfilled unless it rains before long. Yet any rainfall seems highly unlikely. So why exactly are they mildly hopeful? Can the weather conditions shed any light on Elisa's plight?

Everyone knows that a job that's too easy is often unsatisfying. It might lack the challenge it needs to keep things interesting. Strange, then, that Elisa would be so passionate about something that has the potential to be so boring.

Elisa's idealization of the tinker is a classic symptom of wanderlust. This girl needs a road trip, pronto.

Compare the tinker's dissatisfaction (he's literally hungry and in need of a job) with Elisa's more emotional lack of fulfillment. While Elisa has probably never gone without a meal, her hunger nevertheless seems somehow more hopeless than the tinker's.

It seems to us that this moment could have forever altered Elisa's life. What if she reached out to the man and he reciprocated? Or what if she touched his leg, and he shrugged her off? Either way, she would have acted, and broken out of her passive lifestyle. She might have taken the first step on a path to a new kind of fulfillment. But she's too scared, and now we'll never know what might have been.

You know what's weird? If you stop and think about it, you realize that women can do such things. The fact that they don't is not for lack of ability. So what's really stopping Elisa from answering her restlessness? Some other force in her life must be stronger than her general dissatisfaction. But what?

Elisa's been left behind. We can't help but admire her hopefulness in this moment. Who hasn't looked down the road and with a sense of wonder? But this moment is made all the more sorrowful when Elisa finally does hit the road with her husband. Finding out that her chrysanthemums were unceremoniously thrown away can't have been the experience she was looking for.

Helpless, hapless Henry has just tried to pay Elisa a compliment. But she's dissatisfied with his word choice. As Henry struggles to explain himself, it's worthwhile to think back to another time in the story when a character struggles to explain herself, and seems dissatisfied with her own words. We're talking, of course, about Elisa's explanation of how to pick chrysanthemum buds. Is there any more frustrating feeling in the world than not being able to express yourself?

This is the second time Elisa has repeated that dinner will be "good," and frankly a good dinner doesn't seem all that exciting. Here, and in her earlier use of this word in paragraph 19, is she trying to reassure herself that a night out on the town will be enough to placate her restlessness for the time being? Or is she just looking forward to the steak?

Does anyone, for even a second, actually believe Elisa when she says this? We, for one, find it hard to swallow the notion that her general dissatisfaction could be relieved by a mere glass of wine. So why, then, does she say it? What's she hiding from Henry?