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?
One of the later entries in the book called “Good form”, helps alleviate the suspicion of dishonesty in the stories by bluntly telling the reader that all the other entries are a mix of both fact and fiction. O’Brien feels the need to make up parts of his stories due to the fact that he wants the reader to experience emotions as opposed to mental visuals. He describes these emotion-laden scenes as “story-truth” due to the fact that they are part story and part truth. The parts that are only for emotio...
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Charters, A. (2011). The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction (8th ed.). Boston: Bedfor/St. Martin's.
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.
Wonham, Henry B. Charles W. Chesnutt: A Study of the Short Fiction. NY: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
Rielly, Edward J. “Out of the Landscape of His Past.” Journal of American Cultuer 16.3 (1993): 47.
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.
Gender roles have been the one of the longest conflicts since the creation of man. Females have been struggling to gain way in the country since the foundation of the United States. For most of our country’s life up until the 1940’s women predominantly were supposed to stay at the house and do all the house work. For a fictional unnamed female child in the short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, the life of the average woman is not the life she wants to live. She wants to work the hard labor with her father who sells fox pelts but, she is constantly getting “harassed” by her mother to do lady like work. The women’s struggle for rights can be divided up into centuries starting with the 19th and continuing to present day. At the end of the story the girl finally accepts her role as a female because she messes up and her father says, “She’s only a girl.” Men on the other hand, have had always had any opportunity they wanted but, generally their role is the
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.
Owen opens his poem with a strong simile that compares the soldiers to old people that may be hunch-backed. ‘Bent double, like old beggars like sacks.’ ‘like sacks’ suggests the image that the soldiers are like homeless people at the side of a street that is all dirty. This highlights that the clothes they were wearing were al...
...ention given to words when Abel only speaks to his Grandfather when his life has come full circle, even though Abel has wanted to since he came home the first time after the war. The significance of Abel’s silence shows just how much weight he puts on whatever he does say, reflecting the Native American view of the importance of words.
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.