Perhaps as a painting plays light against dark to create images, the words of an author in a work of fiction create tension that produces the vision that the writer wants us as readers to share with him. By sharing, in the vision of an author, we are invited to look at the human condition. It is because of the use of opposition that one can see all the shades of story. The contrast of one character with another or one situation with another gives the reader an overall view of both sides. Literature enables him to enter directly into
             the affective processes of other human beings, and, having done this, the reader open his view of all things human. Through such an exercise of the sympathetic imagination, literature tends to draw on the essence that is carried in every human. The tension in fiction the light and the dark written side by side blend in middle, and it is in the middle that all human being are one. Opposition in literature enables the reader to understand the universality of human emotion.
             Steinbeck creates tension with not only his charters in the short story Chrysanthemums but with the images he evokes. This is the story of an aging farmwife lonely and barren using her hands to caress dirt and bring forth flowers who is visited by a shady traveling salesman. The conflict arises from Elisa Allen's resolve, she has come to accept her life as it is but when this strange man begins to complement her flowers the dream buried deep inside her is awakened. Elisa wants her dream to be alive; she wants to be a beautiful young woman again with her life and love in front of her, blossoming. Elisa knows that in harsh condition flowers writher and die. Juxtaposed to reality is hope . Steinbeck's images of dirt and flowers, of sweat and soap bring forth the universal emotions that come when reality faces hope. These emotions are of despair and pain. This anguish can be felt in the story endin...