Multiple Escapes from Society

In both short stories,  Paul's Case by Cather and The Chrysanthemums by Steinbeck, the main characters are running away from society and their own life's. Paul is running away from society and his father for many reasons. First he is very different from everyone else so he doesn't have many friends. He also doesn't like being around his father because his father doesn't respect that Paul is different. In The Chrysanthemums, Elisa is bored of her house wife life and wants to do something other than planting every day. Both characters are fed up with doing the same thing every day and being told what to do by society so they try to escape. For Paul, he decides the only way to escape is to kill himself because then he won't be alive. For Elisa, she wants to escape societies expectations by doing what men do. When she meets the pots and pans repair man she tells him that she wants to live a life like him instead of doing the same thing every day. He tells her that is not how women are supposed to live and this makes her upset. Both authors show that there will always be people that are different from the group and that there are different ways for people to deal with these differences.