Touching Bottom VS Chrysanthemum

The need to protect usually brings strength in many people, although sometimes overdoing yourself can bring weakness. The protection and values are strong symbols in both short stories. “The Chrysanthemums” is cleverly titled, as the flower is used to symbolize herself and her values, so her need to protect it is strong. Elisa’s flower portray all her hard work, all she strives for; her perfect goal. When she saw her flowers on the side of the road, she felt a piece of her had shattered. Ian had become the item of value and protection in “Touching Bottom”, when she let him go she tried her hardest, pushed harder than she had been pushing, to save him. She found “no time to breathe, no need to breathe.” She allows Ian to claw at her legs, shares her protection of a towel with him when she reaches the shore, and she cradles him and loves him. The flowers and the child are both strong symbols of value, the utimate goal to protect. The protection is relatively related to the changes brought in the story, as both changes were closely placed to the change. In “The Chrysanthemums” Elisa finds change after she changes her clothes, the dress being a symbol of change for herself. While wearing her roughed up gardening attire, she is a strong woman. As soon as Elisa changes into her fancy clothes, she literally changes her whole attitude. She seems as though she doesn’t know what to do with herself; while waiting for her husband she sits patiently on the porch. She changed from the strong woman in the beginning into a sad, little lady who was “crying weakly – like an old woman.” The change in ‘Touching Bottom” is quite contrary. There’s a realization that happens in the woman’s mind as she touches the bottom; she becomes a different, stronger woman. From the beginning of the story we find her to be a weak and fearful woman who is trying to achieve a goal of being an excellent swimmer, and once she touches the bottom, she tries harder, thinks more, and becomes more aware. She divorces her awful husband, and she moves on. The bottom changed her as a person. Whether it be the bottom of an ocean or a change of wardrobe, the two stories “The Crysanthemums” and “Touching Bottom” are stocked full of symbolism. The weaknesses, the strength, the values, and the changes are all portrayed through objects the reader is expected to understand. Luckily, the symbols are quite clear and comprehendable.

In the short story, Touching Bottom, the traditional roles of the male and female characters have been reveresed. Typically, the male protaganist is the hero of the story, but in Touching Bottom the narrator, a women named Kari Strutt, is the one who saves the day when she decides to swim parallel to the shore to call for help. In doing so she frees her step son and self from a potentially deadly current. Whilst women usually are the rescued, she becomes the rescuer of a male in the text. The other main male character of the story is the narrator's husband who also does not play the usual heroic male role. He plays quite the opposite in fact; he is the lowly scum flirting with other women, not giving a damned about spending time with his family, and ultimately the safety of them, a man so ignoble he destroys his second marriage in the course of the book. Without the physical strength and the will to endure of the protaganist, the husband would have lost his son, because of his preoccupation and infidelity.

The time period of which Touching Bottom was written allows Strutt to do something which women of the past could not. She is able to liberate herself from her unfaithful husband by divorcing him after the incident at the beach. In doing so she severs the ties between her and Ian, her step- son, which is most likely the hardest part of the divorce, considering her relationship with Ian is a closer more bonding one than the one she had with her former husband. Later in life she is able to meet up with Ian as an adult and discuss memories with him. Strutt says that "Ian is a man now... He is tall, and handsome, and very smart." In their entire visit they do not mention his Father once. Perhaps this is because her former husband continued his life in the same way he was with her, and therefore he is an undesireable person to speak of. The narrator never gives any indication of regreting her decision to divorce Ian's father, except that she would not be able to see Ian. She says " I came home", so being married and living with Ian's father never was a home to her. She makes no reference to a new family, but being alone seems much better for her than being with her former husband.

1. Summary: The short story "Touching Bottom" is about a woman's life with overcoming her fears. As a young girl she goes through a dramatic experience at camp with leeches and her fear of water soon begins. The story shows your how such a little thing can scare a person, leaving them with a fear they live with everyday. The woman marries a man who has a young son and she soon turns into a model mother for him. A day comes where she is forced to face her biggest fear, deep water. She is enforced to struggle through her fear when she and her son get caught in the currents in the ocean. She puts her panic behind her and works on getting her stepson back to shore saftly. When everyting is over she realizes that her fear was overpowering her and she needed to face it for it to disappear.

2. Personal Connections: I feel that I can kind of relate to the story "Touching Bottom" because I am also have a little fear of deep water. My fear is no where near as bad as the woman in the story but I still feel that I understand her suffering. I never had a significant event that set off my fear so I dont beleive I can totally narrate her fear and say how exactly she is thinking. I was surprised how calm she acted in the water. For someone with a big fear of water she handled herself overally well just for her stepson. She acted brave when they were caught in the current and the only thing she was thinking about was getting him out safely. If I had been in her situation I probably would have panicked and definately not handled it with as much poise as her.

In Touching Bottom by Kari Strutt, the main female character learns to obtain and handle power over her life. In the beginning introductory stories, she tells about the hard work she had to go through to learn to swim and get really good at it. A leech incident when she was young caused her to have a fear of murky waters that never fully went away. She preferred to swim only in clear, clean water. When the main character learns to overcome this fear, she is able to exercise power over her life.

The main character has no real control over her life until she realizes that her husband did not care about her or his son. Once she can overcome her fear of swimming in murky water, she is also able to take control of her life and do what is actually best for her, instead of what she is convinced to do by other people.

Throughout the story, the main character is treated like a possession to her husband and is not able to take control until she saves her step son and has the courage to divorce her husband. She still losses many things in her life, including her step son, whom she had a strong relationship with. She shows power over her own life by realizing that she does not need the male figure in her life to always be looking after her, like her father did when she was young, and then later, her husband persuading her to marry him and move to California. When she has a male, like her step son, relying on her for their life, she is able to show her power over herself and them. This allows her to overcome her fears of being in murky waters, which she realizes are "so soft and warm". This could also show how she no longer needs guidance through her unclear life and she can swim through it by herself.