Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of interconnected short stories written by Sherwood Anderson in 1919. The book tells the tales of the citizens of the fictional town of Winesburg, Ohio, and their struggles with isolation, loneliness, and their search for connection and meaning in their lives.
One of the central themes of Winesburg, Ohio is the idea of isolation and loneliness. The characters in the book are often isolated from each other and from the rest of the world, and this isolation leads to feelings of loneliness and a lack of understanding. This is seen in the character of Wing Biddlebaum, a man who has been ostracized from the community due to a misunderstanding and who is unable to connect with others as a result.
Another theme in the book is the search for connection and meaning in life. Many of the characters are searching for some sense of purpose or meaning in their lives, but often struggle to find it. This is seen in the character of George Willard, a young man who is trying to find his place in the world and understand his own identity.
Despite the themes of isolation and loneliness, Winesburg, Ohio also portrays the idea of the human desire for connection and understanding. The characters in the book often reach out to each other, trying to connect and form meaningful relationships. This is seen in the character of Kate Swift, a schoolteacher who tries to connect with her students and help them understand the world around them.
Overall, Winesburg, Ohio is a thought-provoking and poignant exploration of the human experience. It highlights the struggles of isolation and loneliness, but also the power of connection and understanding to bring meaning and purpose to our lives.
Winesburg, Ohio : text and criticism : Anderson, Sherwood, 1876
He was a small man and very bow-legged and he ran awkwardly. The figure would be silent—it would be swift and terrible. Mook the half-wit lived happily. He was in an asylum over at Dayton, Ohio. .
The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson: Essays in Criticism. According to critic David Stouk's article "Anderson's Expressionist Art", "As an Winesburg, Ohio and the novels of the following decades; Winesburg, Ohio was later, by some critics, considered "undisciplined" and "vague". Alone in his musty office in the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods Company's store, he worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. It did not alarm him. Accessed 9 October 2013. Wash Williams talked in low even tones that made his words seem the more terrible.
Instinctively the man felt in him a glowing resentment of something he had not the courage to resent. In the light that steamed out at the door he stood with the knob in his hand and talked. When I have killed him something will snap within myself and I will die also. They crossed a bridge that ran over a tiny stream and passed another vacant lot in which corn grew. My wife was dead before she married me, she was a foul thing come out a woman more foul. It makes no difference to me. I will not try to tell you of all of them.
Retrieved 5 October 2013. His train runs from Cleveland to where it connects with a great trunk line railroad with terminals in Chicago and New York. What you say clears things up. On the brick sidewalk before the house a man stumbled homeward. Over the long field came a thin girlish voice. For an hour the procession of grotesques passed before the eyes of the old man, and then, although it was a painful thing to do, he crept out of bed and began to write.
He grew avaricious and was impatient that the farm contained only six hundred acres. He had an aunt in Winesburg, a black-toothed old woman who raised chickens, and with her he lived until she died. At the age of 36, he left behind his business and moved to Chicago, becoming one of the rebellious writers and cultural bohemians in the group that has since come to be called the "Chicago Renaissance. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart. His family, consisting of a daughter named Mabel and the son, lived with him in rooms above the store and it did not cost them much to live. She had come home from the store at nine and found the house empty. That makes me laugh now but then it was terrible.
Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson
He went along muttering words and swearing, but when he got into Main Street his anger passed. Upon the veranda of his house by the ravine, Wing Biddlebaum continued to walk up and down until the sun had disappeared and the road beyond the field was lost in the grey shadows. She swore and cried out in her anger. Almost the last words his father had said to him concerned the matter of his behavior when he got to the city. Louise had decided that she would perform the courageous act that had for weeks been in her mind. As she hurried forward she thought how foolish she was. Immediately after he came home he had a wing built on to the old house and in a large room facing the west he had windows that looked into the barnyard and other windows that looked off across the fields.
Long before the time during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg. The voice that had been low and trembling became shrill and loud. . In the darkness George Willard walked along the alleyway, going carefully and cautiously. For a moment he stood thus, rubbing his hands together and looking up and down the road, and then, fear overcoming him, ran back to walk again upon the porch on his own house. When my father died I prayed all night, just as I did sometimes when my brother was in town drinking and going about buying the things for us.
The subject would become so big in his mind that he himself would be in danger of becoming a grotesque. How I hated that color! In the last fifty years a vast change has taken place in the lives of our people. It needs the poet there. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. Among all the people of Winesburg but one had come close to him. Long before the time during which we will know him, he was a doctor and drove a jaded white horse from house to house through the streets of Winesburg.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
Look how it has always been with me. A boy clad in a blue shirt leaped from the wagon and attempted to drag after him one of the maidens, who screamed and protested shrilly. On and on he ran down the hillside, sobbing as he ran. A thing had happened to him that made him hate life, and he hated it wholeheartedly, with the abandon of a poet. Most critics and readers grew impatient with the work he did after, say, 1927 or 1928; they felt he was constantly repeating his gestures of emotional "groping"—what he had called in Winesburg, Ohio the "indefinable hunger" that prods and torments people. The burden this places on the boy is more than he can bear.
Even the clothes mother used to wear were not like other people's clothes, and look at that coat in which father goes about there in town, thinking he's dressed up, too. On the road home they stood up on the wagon seats and shouted at the stars. Elmer tried to explain. The carpenter had once been a prisoner in Andersonville prison and had lost a brother. The Tales and the Persons The Book of the Grotesque The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed.
