Hands

Throughout the course of this class, there have been many assignments involving short stories, however, Hands by Sherwood Anderson is a short story that I found intriguing. Hands is a short story about a man who was an educator who loved his student and his career. Later in his career he was wrongfully accused of molesting a young boy and as a punishment he was severely beaten by the boy’s father and run out of town. Sherwood Anderson published this short story in 1919 and in my opinion wrote a story that evokes every component in which a short story should contain. According to Wikipedia a short story is generally written in narrative prose and falls under 7,500 words, making short story writing an art because it must contain so many components to create and complete story.

When composing a short story the writer will construct a theme in which may be obvious or hidden. Wig Biddlebaum, also known as Adolph Myers during his teaching years, was accused of inappropriately touching male schoolchildren in his school located in Pennsylvania. The accusations were based on his tendency to touch a student’s hair or put his hands on their shoulders while communicating with them. That was Biddlebaum’s way of displaying compassion for his students. It is unfortunate for this compassionate teacher that the innocent touching of the students placed a wrath on him by the townspeople and received a harmful beating which caused him to become physiologically devastated. The theme in Hands rests in the misinterpretation of innocent gestures and facts and the belief that something that once caused misfortune will continue to do so.

Although the theme of a story is not always concrete it is generally simple to identify the protagonist and antag...

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...idence, he walks across a large field “that had been seeded for clover but that had produced only a dense crop of yellow mustard weeds” (49). Green is a general symbol for fertility. This field was planted to be clover, but in its place only grew weeds. The weeds are a symbol for Biddlebaum’s ideas that he tried to share and also signify Biddlebaum's incapability to communicate his dreams and ideas with his hands because his hands were the reason he lost his career. His intentions were take his ideas and grow on them helping students to better themselves, but otherwise brought him hardship. In his eyes, his hands were to blame for his misfortune.

Finally, the setting and atmosphere of Hands give the reader a sense of pitty and gloom for the protagonist due to his hardships and isolation. The setting takes outside of a small town and also around Biddlebaum’s home.