Hollow Words in Winesburg, Ohio
Sherwood Anderson, in his masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio was writing against the notion that stories have to have a plot which reveals a moral idea or conclusion. Like the "tales" that Doctor Parcival tells George Willard in "The Philosopher," Anderson's short stories also seem to "begin nowhere and end nowhere" (51). We as readers must, like George Willard, decide if such stories are little more than "a pack of lies" or if rather, "they contain the very essence of truth" (51). The ability (or lack thereof) of both his characters and his narrator to distinguish between "lies" and "truth" is one of Anderson's central preoccupations. The people who inhabit Winesburg, Ohio are acutely aware of
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Words, instead, serve as obstacles in uncovering "truth." It is not only Anderson's characters, however, which comprehend the impotence of words. The narrator, as we shall see, also struggles to find words that can express "truth." It's not surprising then that "truth", in Winesburg, Ohio takes on a "vague" and amorphous shape that can be described using only the most vague and amorphous of words: "thing."
Present in nearly all the stories of Winesburg, Ohio is a form of what Lionel Trilling has called the "American Laconic," a kind of masculine refusal of words and language. Anderson's characters are intensely aware of the inability of words to capture, express and explain any form of truth or meaning. In "Mother," Elizabeth Willard prays that her son, George, will "be allowed to express something for us both" (40). She thinks to herself, "He is groping about, trying to find himself...He is not a dull clod, all words and smartness.
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Although Anderson understands the impossibility of ever fully capturing "truth" in words, I believe he comes closest when he writes, "One shudders at the thought of the meaningless of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into his eyes" (241). To attempt to analyze this passage would only kill the inherent truth that its words express.
Works Cited and Consulted
Anderson, David D. Critical Essays on Sherwood Anderson. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981.
Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1995.
Burbank, Rex J. Sherwood Anderson. New York: Twayne, 1964.
Campbell, Hilbert H., Ed. The Sherwood Anderson Diaries; 1936-194?. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P,
1. Where did Barbara Anderson’s fieldwork take place and what was the goal of her research?
Charters, A. (2011). The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (8th ed.). Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin's.
Wonham, Henry B. Charles W. Chesnutt: A Study of the Short Fiction. NY: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
In much of The Things They Carried, stories are retold time and time again. One reason for this is the idea of keeping a story’s story-truth alive. In “Good Form,” O’Brien differentiates what he calls story-truth from happening-truth. Story-truth seems to give us a better understanding of O’Brien’s sentiment in a particular story even though the story itself may not be true at all. On the other hand, happening-truth is what actually happened in the story, but may not contain as much emotional authenticity as story-truth. According to O’Brien, story-truth is therefore truer than happening-truth. Relating back to storytelling, O’Brien retells stories continuously to maintain their sentiment and emotional value. Without this continuous repetition, this sentiment fades away and the emotional value of the story is lost.
Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer An Introduction to Short Fiction. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 1999.
Teenage rebellion is typically portrayed in stories, films, and other genres as a testosterone-based phenomenon. There is an overplayed need for one to acknowledge a boy’s rebellion against his father, his life direction, the “system,” in an effort to become a man, or rather an adult. However, rarely is the female addressed in such a scenario. What happens when little girls grow up? Do they rebel? Do they, in a sudden overpowering rush of estrogen, deny what has been taught to them from birth and shed their former youthful façades? Do they turn on their mothers? In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Possessive,” the reader is finally introduced to the female version of the popular coming-of-age theme as a simple haircut becomes a symbol for the growing breach between mother and daughter through the use of striking images and specific word choice.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
May, Charles E. “‘Do You See What I’m Saying?’: The Inadequacy of Explanation and the Uses of Story in the Short Fiction of Raymond Carver.” The Yearbook of English Studies. Vol. 31. 2001. 39-49. Essay.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.
Magill, Frank N., ed. Critical Survey of Short Fiction. Revised ed. Vol. 2. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1993. 7 vols.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
The words Owen chooses to use in the poem describing the soldiers are peculiar choices. The speaker refers to them as “[b]ent double, like beggars in sacks” (line 1), very different from a typical idea of a soldier. From the beginni...
Mathewson, Joseph. " Taking the Anne Tyler Tour." Horizon, Vol. 28, no. 7, September 1985, (p. 313).
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.
As one of the greatest alternatives to fossil fuels, an important advantage of nuclear energy is the significantly lower emission rate of CO2 in comparison to plants which use coal and natural gas.2 Nuclear power is not reliant on fossil fuels and therefore producing energy by this method reduces pollution and the contribution to climate change. However, whilst the actual process of generating energy releases few emissions, uranium must be mined and purified and in the past this has not always been an environmentally clean process.2 Ultimately, uranium will one day run out, but nuclear reactors are versatile and may also run on Thorium. Despite being finite, this would allow nuclear power stations to function for a longer period of time.