Prologue: "The Book of the Grotesque" Summary

The prologue to Anderson's book tells us of an old writer, a man with a white mustache, who wishes he could see out of his high windows when in bed. He hires a carpenter to raise his bed so that it would be level with the windows. The carpenter was a soldier in the Civil War and was also old with a white mustache. Crying, he tells the old writer how his brother died of starvation in the Andersonville prison. He looks ridiculous crying with a cigar in his mouth. The carpenter ends up doing the bed his own way and the old writer has to use a chair to get to it.

In bed, the old writer would wonder about having a heart attack since he had always smoked. The thoughts of dying would lead him to feel more alive, almost as if he had a young woman inside of him. He would think pleasantly about the many women who had loved him and about the people he had known more intimately than anyone else. He would dream while half-awake of indescribable figures whom he believed the young thing inside was pushing in front of his eyes. The figures were grotesque versions of all the people he had known, ranging from the nearly beautiful to the painfully misshapen.

The parade of characters in his mind caused the old man to rise and begin to write. His writing coalesced into a book entitled "The Book of the Grotesque." The narrator notes that the book made a distinct impression on him. According to the old writer, the world had been filled by thoughts which man made into truths. The old man listed the truths, such as the truths of virginity and poverty, and decried that all were beautiful. Each of his figures grasped at least one of the truths and made it their mantra. The decision to base all of one's existence on an absolute truth transformed the figure into a grotesque and the truth into a lie. The old writer never published his book but was engrossed by it. He himself would have become a grotesque if it had not been for the youth inside. The carpenter was a perfect example of a common man who mutated into the grotesque but remained lovable.

Prologue: Analysis

Anderson originally planned to title his collection "The Book of the Grotesque" until the publisher suggested Winesburg, Ohio to which Anderson agreed. Still, the theme of the grotesque is the focus of his writing. The tone which is set forth in the prologue was established purposely by Anderson in order to lead the reader toward the type of mood he wanted to be adopted. His characters were flawed, all ineffectual and incomplete. His theory that their ruined being came from their collection of truth was an interesting philosophy about which he meant to make no pretenses. Anderson believed that one should keep separate the worlds of realism and fantasy. He did not believe that an author could not write about both or about the collision of these worlds but he feared that authors would become stuck on realism or naturalism and forget about the importance of dreams, idealism, surrealism, and fantasy.

Nevertheless, many have understood Anderson as a naturalistic writer, one of the earliest post World War I avant garde writers, because of his exploration of the grotesque and of the failings of the modern man in modern society. In almost every story in Winesburg, Ohio the protagonist becomes engrossed in a moment. The moment is highly significant and pivotal in the life of the protagonist and appears as if it will spur him on to life changing action. However, it never does. The moment slips away and so does the vivacity of the figure which Anderson has chosen to highlight.

In this manner, we can better understand the character of the old writer established in the prologue, "The Book of the Grotesque." The old writer is inspired one night while thinking about the possibility of his having a heart attack. At this point, he experiences the thing inside of him which feels like a young woman. This image will strike the reader as quite bizarre but it is a rather creative way of describing the type of moments, or even personal quirks, to which Anderson will introduce us with his other characters. A young woman's most identifiable, albeit stereotypical, characteristic would be fertility and to create this image within the body of the old writer gives us a symbol of life within death. This is one of the Anderson's favorite themes. The moment of clarity which the old writer experiences allows him to give birth, in a sense, to the figures which he imagines and then sets to paper.

The following pages of the text, it is implied, document the clarifying moments in the lives of the figures he has conceived. The carpenter is the first example of a grotesque given by the narrator in the prologue, though the old writer comes glaringly close himself. The narrator justifies his escape from this form by pointing to the young thing which remains inside of the writer. We can thus determine that the grotesques will experience a clarifying moment similar to the old writer's which will then be extinguished. This attribute makes them grotesque: they have grasped a truth but cannot sustain it because they view it as an absolute. Similar to Cane, the collection of literature written by Jean Toomer four years after Anderson's text, each character's hope for truth and life goes unfulfilled and works as a commentary on the disillusionment experienced by modern man combating the industrial materiality of society following World War I.

"Hands" Summary

"Hands" is the story of a fat, old, little man named Wing Biddlebaum who lives mainly isolated from the town life of Winesburg, Ohio. He remained a mystery to the majority of the town after moving there twenty years before. Often frightened, he would hear ghostly voices personifying his doubts. He would sit on the outskirts of the town in his little house and watch the youth. He spoke closely only with George Willard, the boy reporter of the Winesburg Eagle. George would occasionally walk to his house in the evenings and Wing looked forward to these times. Only with George would Wing become alive, walking into town or talking loudly and feverishly above the whisper he normally used.

He spoke mainly with his hands which flew in excitement. Their movement was fidgety and restless, compared by a poet to the wings of a bird, giving him his name. Normally, Wing attempted to keep his hands hidden. He looked at others' calm hands in amazement. When he spoke with George, he would harness their energy by making fists and beating them against walls or fences. The town was proud of Wing's hands like one is of any novelty. George wished to know why Wing restrained his hands and why he seemed almost frightened by their power. He nearly asked one day when Wing was very excitedly talking to him about George's propensity for being too easily influenced by the townspeople. Wing wanted him to think and act for himself, and not to be afraid to dream. Wing's involvement with his lecture led him to reveal his hands without noticing. While talking in earnest, they touched George's shoulders and caressed him. Fear suddenly crossed Wing's face and he ran quickly back home.

Wing had previously lived in Pennsylvania as a school teacher named Adolf Myers who was loved by the boys he taught because of his gentle power. He spoke dreamily and with his hands and voice tried to convey that dream into the hearts of the young boys. He caressed their shoulders and tousled their hair. Through his hands, he expressed himself and the boys began to dream instead of doubt. One boy came along who yearned for the teacher and dreamt of unspeakable things at night, spreading his dreams through the town as truth. Fears of Adolph were substantiated. The boys confirmed that he had played with their hair and touched their shoulders. One father beat Adolph and at night, the town came forth to drive him from it, nearly hanging him. He gathered a new last name from a box of goods and lived in Winesburg with an aunt until she died. Wing was only forty-five but looked much older. He felt ashamed for his hands, though unsure of what he had done wrong. He paced on his veranda after leaving George until the sun set and then ate and prepared for bed. George acted as his medium of expression and Wing missed his presence. Crumbs of white bread littered the floor. He picked them up nimbly and rapidly, appearing in the low light like a priest with his rosary beads.

"Hands" Analysis

Wing provides us with the first in-depth look at the character as a grotesque. The young thing inside the old writer created the figures, one of which is Wing Biddlebaum. As is ordinary in Anderson's short stories, the grotesque figure has become old before his time due to the tiring and stressful circumstances which he has endured in life. Most of the figures share the similar history of a failed passion in life, of some kind or another. Many are lonely introverts who struggle with a burning fire which still smolders inside of them. The moments described by the short stories are usually the moments when the passion tries to resurface but no longer has the strength. The stories are brief glimpses of people failing.

Wing's hands are a manifestation of his being grotesque. They are a form of metonymy if one understands grotesque as awkward and strange. But Anderson more largely explored the figure of the grotesque. According to his theories, a grotesque was one who grasped a truth of the world too independently and too completely and thus failed. Anderson's grotesque is one who is ineffectual in communication, one who fails at expression. Wing's hands CAN express Wing's feelings, he just does not allow them to. Moreover, the hands are a symbol of the old writer from the prologue. Wing's hands had once been his medium of expression like a pen or typewriter is writer's medium of expression. We are told that Wing's hands are quick and skillful; he is talented. But his skill is tainted and feared - grotesque - giving the reader another perspective through which to view the act of writing itself and through which to understand the hand of the book's author.

The reader understands Wing as a harmless, sensitive man who is frightened by his own passions. He tends to be misunderstood by the people around him. We are endeared to Wing especially after learning about the circumstances which brought him to Winesburg. He urges George to dream and follow his own heart without giving into the influence of the townspeople. This parallels the life he had led as a school teacher before the scandal. The similarity of circumstances leads to his fear arising and his need to flee from George. But, we are soothed by the fact that the passion, the young woman inside of Wing, is still alive even though it has been chased out of one town and lives in fear in another.

Still, Wing has failed. He had lived a content life as a school teacher until his dreams had been dashed. Then, he was unable to fight back and nearly was killed. The moment with George Willard which is highlighted in the short story occurs as a result. Wing comes close to finding that life within himself again. With George, Wing can act openly. George's role as the medium will reoccur throughout the collection of stories. He will be the link between reader and grotesque figure, allowing us to see inside of each for one glaring instant and to view the living passion which had once driven them. When Adolph Myers flees to Winesburg and becomes Wing Biddlebaum, he is afraid to express himself through his hands and gestures as he once had with the boys he taught. This all changes when Wing is around George. In George's presence, Wing is feels freer to be himself. George makes whole the ineffectual attempts at communication with which Wing struggles.

"Paper Pills" Summary

Doctor Reefy was an old man who had once been a doctor. The knuckles on his large hands looked like wooden balls when he made a fist. He was tall and had worn the same suit for ten years. He had been married to a dark, beautiful, wealthy girl for less than a year before she died. After her death, he would sit in his office all day long and smoke a pipe with the windows closed. He was a man with an inner fire. While sitting, he would create pyramids of truth before tearing them down. When thoughts occurred to him, he would write them down on scraps of paper and shove them into his pockets. His pockets would fill with these scraps, forming balls, until he developed a truth out of the thoughts. The truth would grow to terrible proportions and then Doctor Reefy would destroy that truth and begin again with the bits of paper.

The story of Reefy's courtship with the dark girl is similar to the sweetness hidden in the gnarled twisted apples of Winesburg. The girl had visited the Doctor because she was pregnant and frightened. After the death of her parents, many suitors had pounced upon her due to the inheritance she gained. They all spoke to her about passion except for two men, one who spoke to her about virginity and the other who would silently move her into the darkness to kiss her. The girl figured she would marry the first of the two suitors until she began to fear that his passion was the most intense of all. She dreamt of him biting into her and then became pregnant by the silent suitor.

Once she had visited Doctor Reefy, she did not want to leave his side. The Doctor was to the girl like the sweet hidden part of a twisted apple. She waited in his reception area while he pulled the teeth of a woman from the town. The doctor then took her for a ride in the country. They spent the next couple of weeks together. The girl's pregnancy passed during an illness. They married in the fall and the Doctor read his little scraps of paper to her over the winter. She died that spring.

"Paper Pills" Analysis

The descriptions provided by Anderson are often quite intentional. It seems almost silly to even question whether his character descriptions would be intentional however, it is important to note that the details he gives are given for a reason, often symbolic. Also, they allow Anderson to illustrate the voice of the narrator, who is by no means a perfect or wholly objective voice. He or she appears to be rather judgmental and could even be said to invent much of the stories he (gender chosen for simplicity) tells. The implications behind many of the events or conversations or intentions could not have been determined by a narrator unless he was omniscient and this narrator admits speedily that he is not. During the last vignette, "Hands", he confesses, "And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet there" (31). Thus the narrator knows that he is flawed and that other narrators of a more cultured upbringing may have done the characters a greater justice.

Anderson was purposely writing in a more simplistic, common American tone and would occasionally replace his prose with a more antiquated or colloquial style. Still, the words he chooses and the product he creates is far from rough. Critics generally refer to his style of writing as lyrical prose as the flow is consistently melodic and well structured. It rolls easily to the reader while retaining a high quality of language. Thus an ironic perspective is given to the narrator who is illustrating through his own voice the grotesque qualities of the people of Winesburg while battling with the grotesque within himself while simultaneously the reader knows that Anderson is controlling and adding irony to the narrator. The narrator becomes another of Anderson's character sketches.

In "Paper Pills", the knuckles are first focused on by the narrator. After reading "Hands", this characteristic strikes the reader immediately because the knuckles are so closely associated with the hands. Anderson's figures tend to have extremely awkward and grotesque features, functioning as a form of metonymy, which loom from their bodies. We are told that the knuckles look like wooden balls but then the focus shifts and we nearly forget about the knuckles. Is this merely an overview by the flawed narrator? Or, does Anderson hint at a connection between the knuckles and the paper pills which the narrator misses?

The image of the wooden balls parallels the balls of paper which form in the Doctor's pockets en masse before he empties them out. This man carries around heavy thoughts concerning the world which weigh him down in much the same manner as his overbearing knuckles. The knuckles foreshadow the odd tendency of the man to take ideas from the air and form them into balls of truth. Remember back to the old writer of the prologue who had a parallel theory to that of the Doctor. Thoughts form into truths which them become too dominant and great for their own good and must be destroyed. Much like the twisted apples, metaphors for the twisted truths construed by the Doctor, the thoughts begin as fertile wholes, but become distorted and hide their sweetness. He must spill out the paper balls as the truth becomes too dominant and the paper fills his pocket.

On a much smaller level, Parcival plays this out in his own life. He feeds on the creation and destruction of a world of truths and his life functions for the reader as a microcosm of the old writer's role in the book. The old writer created the figures, but never gives them wholeness in their lives. Like the truths, he builds them up and then tears them down. In this manner, the figures are metaphors for the theory of universal truths created by the old writer. Parcival cannot be solely sustained by the pyramids of truths he constructs but must share them. The girl is easily another symbol of fertility, as she dreams vividly of being bitten into and then is quickly described as pregnant. She is his twisted apple (as he is hers), violated by the suitor, but hiding a sweetness, a truth, which the Doctor finds for himself. The narrator strips him of this life force rapidly and he is destined to sit in a stuffy office and dream of truths which can never be.

"Mother" Summary

The parents of George Willard, the boy reporter of the Winesburg Eagle, were Elizabeth and Tom Willard, the proprietors of the New Willard House hotel. Elizabeth walked listlessly around the old hotel and attempted to straighten up the drab surroundings when she had the energy. As a girl, Elizabeth had been passionate and restless. She had talked with the traveling men at the hotel about theater and had torrid affairs with them. Since then, some disease had killed the fire inside of her causing her to look older than forty-five. Her husband was ashamed of her and the state of disrepair she and the hotel presently stood in. He looked at both as a statement of his failure in life. Tom prided himself on being the leading Democrat in a town of Republicans.

An unexpressed, deep bond existed between Elizabeth and her son, although she remained quite timid around the boy. When George was out of the house, she would crouch in his room and pray to God that he would live to express meaning for the both of them and not become drab like herself. When George was at home, he would sometimes join his mother if she was ill. They would sit quietly in her room during the evening and look out the window. Often, they would watch a cat sneak into the bakery and the baker throw him out. Once, while alone, Elizabeth wept because the scene reminded her of her failed struggle in life. Frequently, George would sit with her in an awkward silence. She would tell him to play outside, trying to alleviate the awkwardness, and he would tell her he was going for a walk.

Elizabeth became very ill for a while and George did not visit her. She was worried by his absence and crept toward his room. She heard him inside speaking to himself. It pleased her to hear him like that as she thought it meant he had a secret striving for life as she had once had. George's door opened and his father stepped out. In the shadows, Elizabeth was infuriated to hear Tom tell the boy that he would have to wake up if he was to become successful like his father. Her weakness suddenly gone, Elizabeth strove to punish Tom and save her son from his influence. She had felt a general hatred toward Tom for years but now it became directed and Elizabeth decided she would stab him. After Tom died, she too would die.

Elizabeth decided she should look beautiful when she descended upon her husband. She found an old box of theater make-up. She would be like a tigress. She stood up to act when George entered and told her that he was leaving. She asked George if he thought he had to wake up and become a business man to feel alive. George was sad neither parent understood him. He explained that he just wanted to look at people and think. However, because of something his father said, it was important that George go away. His mother wanted to cry with joy but she no longer could. Elizabeth told him to go outside and George replied that he would take a walk.

"Mother" Analysis

The table of contents tells us that the short story, "Mother", is "concerning Elizabeth Willard" and thus we know to focus or analysis of the grotesque upon George's mother. The figure of Elizabeth functions as a perfect example of Anderson's theme of life in death. Similar to the life trapped inside of the old writer or the passion restrained within Wing Biddlebaum, Elizabeth Willard was once young and vital with big dreams but now is unable to communicate them or live effectively. Anderson gives a vague reason for her decline. He writes, "Šsome obscure disease had taken the fire out of her figure." Yet the woman has retreated into such anonymity because of this disease that she finds herself drab. She has become used to long periods of sitting silently and staring. Her lack of communication with the world mirrors a living death. She is threatened by all vitality except from her son. She gleans that he is vital from the fact that he likes to talk to himself. George is the seed which has the chance to germinate and revitalize her dashed dreams in life.

Note that Elizabeth had wanted to be an actress when younger and even then could only communicate with men from out of town. The theater men could not support her ideas of the theater life. Only the traveling men sustained these dreams and were apparently rewarded with sex. This act is only alluded to, but the narrator suggests it strongly by commenting, "It was always the same, beginning with kisses and ending, after strange wild emotions, with peace and then sobbing repentance." Thus, even in her wilder days, Elizabeth had an emotional passion inside of her which she did not know how to harness. She allowed herself to be used by the traveling men in order to satisfy a craving within herself for expression and attention. Yet it was ineffectual. We understand more than Elizabeth why she was the only one overcome by emotion after the lovemaking. Elizabeth had grabbed onto the absolute truth that acting and a theater life would be the ultimate escape for herself and refused to be distracted from this plan when men from the theater world told her that their life was not what she imagined. By holding onto this one supposed truth, she became grotesque, her disease acting as a metaphor for the grotesque which overcame her.

Another metaphor Anderson provides for the struggle of Elizabeth's character is the poor cat which is hated by Groff the baker. She wept when she identified with the cat's failure and the reader is given another vehicle through which to read her persona. She has tried to find the goodies in life, but has been thrown out the door and beaten down by life instead. As a figure, she has traveled the spectrum. She was wild and of ill repute in town when young and then drab and nearly anonymous when older. She is never able to find the happy medium, as none of Anderson's characters ever are. Even in her moments of action, such as when she decides to kill her husband, she must first take out her old theater make-up. This plan is inadequate because she is still grasping at an absolute sense of being. Instead of learning to be herself, she can only hope to impress Tom by masking her visage and playing the "tigress."

Playing an actress and covering herself in make-up symbolize Elizabeth's pretense. She should not look for singular events which symbolize or represent truths in the world. Her belief in her son rises in part from her notion that since George talks aloud to himself that he must have a passion for life as she once had. She is also pleased that he does not agree with his father's philosophy that he must wake up but she is mistaken to use two singular episodes as definitive in George's life. Furthermore, though she wishes strongly to show her happiness to George by weeping or crying out in joy, she is no longer able to produce emotion and resorts to the token response she uses to relieve an awkward moment. Her old passion is trapped within her or masked by pretense. Elizabeth is truly a sympathetic grotesque.

"The Philosopher" Summary

Doctor Parcival was a fat, unkept man who had a practice with few patients in Winesburg and yet he always seemed to have enough money. His eyes were peculiar, the left lid flapping like a window shade. He took a liking to George Willard and would come visit him immediately after the owner of the paper, Will Henderson, went to the saloon. He would smoke stogies and try to convince the boy to follow his advice. He was intent on making an acquaintance with George and would tell him long stories which George found very meaningful. Parcival had been in Winesburg five years since moving from Chicago. He got into a fight his first night in town. Since, he had worked and slept in his dirty office, eating whatever Biff Carter, the lunch room owner, felt like serving him.

Parcival told George tales of himself and how he had been a reporter like George in some unknown town. He gave hints to where he had lived but no more. His father had been placed in an asylum and his brother worked as a railroad painter and was continuously covered in orange paint. His mother liked his brother more than him even though his brother was mean and would not allow anyone to touch the money he brought home from work. His brother would spend the money frivolously and later send gifts to the family. Parcival was training to be a minister. He prayed often and gave his mother all the money from reporting, except for the few dollars he would steal from his brother's stash. When his father died, he traveled to the asylum and blessed his father's body. He told these tales for vague reasons, but mainly because he liked George and hoped he would not become a fool like himself. Parcival hoped to convince George to be like his brother, a superior being. His brother had been run over by a car and killed while drunk.

One day, an accident occurred in town and a little girl was thrown from a stagecoach. It was right before George made his daily visit to hear Parcival read from the book he was writing. Even though the girl was dead, people ran in search of doctors and someone ran up to Parcival. He refused to see the dead girl and then immediately feared the town would be incensed by his response. He did not know that no one had noticed. When George arrived, Parcival declared that he would definitely be hanged. Maybe not now, but someday. Parcival pleaded with George to pay attention to him and finish the book he had started. His message was simple and important, he felt. He wanted George to inform the world that all people are Christ and are crucified.

"The Philosopher" Analysis

This story is constructed to portray a multitude of paradoxical contradictions, implicitly and explicitly. The ironic contrasts relay the different emotions which are presented by the philosopher Dr. Parcival. To begin with, there are simple textual ironies which Anderson gives to Parcival in dialogue such as when he tells George about his family. Parcival says, "I studied to be a minister and prayed. I was a regular ass about saying prayers." The conflation of deep religiosity with a curse word is amusing and insightful. If we were to hear a minister say that he was an ass about prayers, we would be surprised. However, Parcival became a doctor instead of a minister. As a grotesque, Parcival could not lead the life he intended. The breaks and distortions in the lives of Anderson's figures are what makes them incomplete and grotesque.

How Parcival regards himself is also heavily laden with contradiction. Parcival is very self-centered. The narrator tells us that Parcival would relate to George long tales about Parcival himself. Yet, a paragraph later we are told that not only is Parcival incredibly dirty but he will eat anything, even the food Biff is unable to sell. It seems that Dr. Parcival is self-centered and yet cares nothing for himself. He is not self-conscious but self-centered? The analysis of the contradiction allows the reader to see into the heart of Parcival's personality. He lives inwardly, thinking and devising, but not truly taking part in the humanity around him. Note the grotesque description we are given of Parcival at the beginning of the story. Parcival's most noticeably awkward characteristic is the twitching left eye lid which flaps like a window shade. This lid is a form of metonymy, representing the whole of Parcival's character. He sees the world from inward out. His outward persona, his body and cleanliness, do not concern him. As often occurs in regard to Anderson's theme of life in death, Parcival lives only on the inside. The stories he tells George come from within and are his only living force. The book he is writing about all of man being Christ is much more important than his practice as a doctor. The lid as the shade of the eye implies that the eye symbolizes the window of the soul. Through his eyes, Parcival allows his soul to speak and tries to see into the soul of George Willard, with whom he feels he could share. Note that Parcival would appear at George's office immediately after Will Henderson left, almost as if he had been watching. The narrator is hinting that Parcival is in fact watching, whether physically or symbolically. Parcival can only function from within. He is turned inside out, twisted and irregular.

And yet, the story of Parcival is the story of universal man. In the state of modern man, anesthetized to normal social and personal emotions, one is not able to simply say what he feels or act as he wishes. Anderson's collection predated T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and other such works of the disillusioned modern sensibility which erupted in the United States after World War I. The distorted grotesque in Winesburg,Ohio was also an everyman, dealing with the issues and emotions humanity was facing at that time. Parcival searches George Willard out because he is the medium of communication in the town. Parcival needs for someone to listen to him and take him seriously. He has been looking out through his window shade in search of another soul to share his life and George fulfills that symbolic function. The stories he tells George are not important for his life specifically though he includes many details. The motivation for his storytelling is to express himself as a person to George, to try to make himself whole. He cannot give his exact locations in the story because as he comments, "Šit makes no difference." He is any man who needs someone to listen. Through his story, though, we learn of his ideas of a superior being and his wish to lead George in that direction. Even though Parcival's brother was killed without glory, he is under the delusion that a man who could control others and spend money any way he wished was a superior being. In the modern world, it seems that money and power rule.

The last major ironic contrast that we experience entails Parcival's theory that all people are Christ and all are crucified. It is greatly ironic that Parcival is worried that he will not be allowed to complete the book containing this idea if the town hangs him for being unchristian. He refuses to see a young, injured girl after an accident for no apparent reason. This could easily be considered evil and yet this man is proclaiming that he and all men are Christ! Anderson was stressing that the idea of religion had degenerated in the modern community. Instead of enacting the theories of his religion, Parcival has twisted it and distorted it. Parcival is not able to reach his fellow man with his theories so refuses to aid man when he is approached for help. The lack of courage is symbolic of the degeneration of the ties between man and community.

"Nobody Knows" Summary

George Willard had been nervously sitting in his office at the Winesburg Eagle during the day trying to think. Finally deciding to act, he sprang into the dark alleyways. Walking along the streets, he peered into each store and stumbled over the drunk lying in the alley. Skipping over the light, he ran in the darkness. He was afraid he would lose his courage before he got to Louise Trunnion's house. Stopping, he saw her washing dishes in the kitchen with her father. After a few minutes he got up the nerve to call her name. She asked why he was so sure she would want to see him and then told him she would meet him in a few minutes after she talked to her father. George felt frustrated because she had been the one to solicit his attention. That morning, he had received a letter from her saying she was his if he wanted her.

They walked silently together, George afraid to touch her. Finally he got up the nerve and words spilled from his mouth. He became the man and told her there was nothing to worry about. They crossed a bridge and walked along until they found boards upon which to sit. When George got back to town later that night, he was glad to find a man, Shorty Crandall, with whom to talk. He then walked toward the New Willard House, pausing to think how Louise had nothing on him. Nobody would ever know.

"Nobody Knows" Analysis

This story details George's mistaken rite of passage into manhood. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is purposely vague. Anderson's narrator provides a mock oral narration, in the style of Mark Twain. For example, Twain would create an environment for a storyteller in order to infuse his own voice and message. The narrator alternates between keeping his distance from the situations with an air of objectivity and having a propensity to speak directly to the reader at times. He is objective and yet subjective, telling the stories as he chooses. In this way, Anderson has made the narrator a character of the stories.

In this case, the narrator sets the scene by withholding certain information. The reader does not know why George is so nervous. She only understands that it is dark and George is anxious and feels he must sneak about. We get a taste for the underside of Winesburg at night - alleyways and drunkards lying in the street. George it seems is almost on a prowl like a predator. He is out for the hunt in a mock rite of passage. The narrator uses the word "adventure" to describe the mission George is on when he leaves the office. Note that Anderson applies this word for many of the characters to describe many of the moments they will experience. By providing this term, we note that an adventure for one of the grotesque characters is usually a minute experience, a trivial or insignificant event but one which involves a great amount of courage or anxiety on the character's part. An adventure is a journey to release the passion, the life within the death, for the grotesques. For George, this is the first time that we have read a story concerning him as the main character and not solely the medium of expression for others.

And yet, Anderson lists the story in the table of contents as "concerning Louise Trunnion". Thus it is a mistake to focus only on George. He is a window through which we can view the grotesque character of Louise Trunnion. She is being hunted. George stalks through the dark alleyways, representing the his anxiety, and then stands in the fields calling to Louise. She claims the upper hand. Not only had she sent George the letter claiming that she would be his but she plays hard to get when they meet. Nonetheless, George uses the opportunity to feel like a man and uses Louise as a conquest. The two teenagers are thrown together as a metaphor for the broken ties of community. The story is a mock look at the rituals of love and lust which control both of their moves as George wants to touch Louise because he can and Louise uses the situation to boost her confidence. About George, the text reflects his motives, "He became wholly the male, bold and aggressive. In his heart there was no sympathy for her." George has been fit into the archetypal mating pattern. Louise on the other hand deprecates herself in order to move closer to George. The text states, "'You think you're better than I am. Don't' tell me, I guess I know,' she said drawing closer to him." The weak and vulnerable female is taken advantage of by the masculine, controlling male.

The details of their lust are avoided by the narrator because it is not the point. The two moving in broken patterns express the changing society and mocks the traditional rites of passage to maturity for both characters. George feels extremely satisfied after the experience. He smokes a cigar and talks with a man. These symbolize his newly found masculinity and maturity. And yet the story ends with George afraid that he has changed his life too drastically and that Louise will have a claim on him now. He cannot yet accept the responsibility inherent in being an adult and forming valid relationships. The scene at the end shows George standing alone in the darkness. Louise is left behind and George has made zero strides toward maturity. The static episode illustrates that in the life of the grotesque nothing changes.

"Godliness" Summary Part I:

The Bentley family had bought land in Northern Ohio many years before the Civil War and worked hard to clear away trees and make it into suitable farmland. By the time Jesse Bentley's father owned the land, much of the work had been accomplished but they still worked with great determination and brute to make the land their own. Jesse had four brothers, all who were big and strong, while he was the odd one, small and feminine, who had gone to school to become a minister instead of work on the farm. The men in those days had only the saloon to express their passions and fights would arise. Enoch Bentley almost killed his father in such a pursuit. When his father had lived, he returned to work as usual.

When the Civil War came, Enoch and Jesse's three other brothers went off to fight and were all killed. Mr. Bentley then had to turn the farm over to his weak, small son and Jesse returned. His mother had died so no one remained who understood him. He brought a gentle wife from the city, Katherine, and ignorantly watched her overwork her delicate body and die from childbirth. His father retreated to die in the background. Jesse was weak in frame but strong in spirit. All through his life, he had an aura emanating from him which was very alive. The whole farm was scared of him, including his wife. They all never worked so hard in their lives. He would sit all day in a wing of the house he had built and think of ways to improve his farm.

Jesse liked to equate himself to the Jesse of the Old Testament, believing that he was the ruler of land and men and would give forth to a long line of succeeding rulers. He would ask God to look on him in favor, as God's servant, and to protect his interests. His fervor is difficult to imagine after the advance of the industrial age which had occurred between the Civil War and the time Anderson's book was published fifty years later. Yet at that time, men in the Midwest worked very hard and were often too tired to read. Churches were the center of their lives. At a young age, Jesse had given himself wholeheartedly to God and thus his imagination and passions were directed to this end. He loved the idea of power and would jump about his farm imagining that God would soon give him the kingdom he desired. On a night Katherine was expecting to give birth, Jesse ran through the woods and thought of how all of the land he touched should be given to him by God. His brothers had failed him. He imagined God's coming to the biblical Jesse. Jesse pleaded with God for his new baby to be a son which he could name David. The two of them could ward off the Ohio farmers who, like the Philistines, were after their lands and were enemies of God.

"Godliness" Summary Part II:

David Hardy was Jesse Bentley's grandson, born to Louise, the daughter Katherine had given birth to instead of the son Jesse had prayed for, and her husband, John Hardy, a banker. Because of his mother, he had not enjoyed a very happy childhood. Louise's life was half as a recluse when she would hide herself away and half as a raving lunatic. Her husband's influence in the town saved her many times from arrest. David was sent occasionally to visit his grandfather on the farm. He loved these times and once after returning from the farm, run away back to the farm. It became dark and David was lost. His imagination pictured horrible things and he was not sure if he would ever find his grandfather. A farmer overheard him crying and brought him back to town. John Hardy had found out that he was missing and sent out a search team. Only his mother knew when David returned and she took him in her arms and cleaned and fed him. When men from town came by, she hid him so she could continue caring for him. He felt that being lost was worth it to find such a caring, changed mother waiting for him at home.

Jesse came to speak with John about bringing David to live with him. They were afraid that Louise would protest but she recognized that he would be happier away from her influence and that the farm would be kinder to David than it had been to her. David barely remembered living with his mother and was much happier on the farm. Each morning he would awake excitedly and run out to see the farm. Two of Jesse's sisters still lived in the house and one became David's caretaker. Since she sat near his bed as he fell asleep, he would dream of his mother and a silent bond grew between them. David made the house cheerier and his relationship with his grandfather grew very close. Jesse believed that his prayers had finally been answered.

Jesse still held the belief that he was God's servant. He had also adapted to the material age which had ensued since Louise's birth. He invented machines and tried to persuade John Hardy to become involved with the moneymaking. After David's arrival, Jesse's dreams revived regarding his connection to God. One day, while riding in the buggy, Jesse became very thoughtful. He looked at David for moments and then forgot David was present. He seemed to be filled with the desires which had wrought his body on the night Katherine gave birth. Suddenly, he stopped the buggy. Jesse felt that if the two knelt to God, the miracle he had waited for would finally occur. The boy became very frightened. The old man rose from the ground and grabbed him by the shoulders. Jesse screamed, calling for a sign from God. David believed it was no longer his grandfather and ran into the woods. He stumbled and hit his head very hard, falling to the ground. When he awoke, he was in his grandfather's arms and his fear melted. As they drove away, Jesse cried out sadly to God: what had he done to cause God's disproval?

"Surrender" Summary Part III: "Surrender"

Louise Bentley, Jessie's daughter, was born into a house where she was immediately unwanted. She wanted love but did not receive it and was unhappy and moody. At fifteen, she was sent to live with Albert Hardy and his family in Winesburg so that she could attend school. Albert was a man who believed that education was going to be essential in the coming years. He pressed this point repeatedly upon his two daughters, Mary and Harriet, and his young son, John. His daughters rebelled against him and did very little school work. When Louise moved into the house, she did not know how the Hardy girls felt about school. She was shy and over the first weeks, she made no friends. She did her best to impress the teacher and her classmates, studying hard and answering all of the questions. The Hardy girls resented her effort in school greatly. When Albert Hardy lectured them on how much better Louise was doing, they were furious. They stopped speaking with her and Louise dissolved into tears.

With their company completely absent, Louise began to look at John Hardy for companionship. He carried wood up to the stove in her room every evening. She would try to make conversation with him but she was too shy. She hoped that the coldness of her life was not permanent. She only thought of John as a possible friend, but she soon related friendship to sex after encountering Mary Hardy with a boy caller. Nice girls in the Midwest were allowed to entertain boys in the house parlor and one evening when Albert had gone from home, Mary's gentleman came to visit. Louise had been in her room as usual but when John had left after bringing the wood, she called to him out the window. She then waited in silence for a few moments until she became anxious and crept downstairs. Hiding while Mary and the man entered the room, she was trapped in the darkness as Mary was held and kissed. Finally Louise escaped to her room and thought about how wonderful it would be to be loved. She quickly wrote a note to John about wanting to love him if he would come to her in the orchard. Her feelings darted back and forth between wanting him to call for her and wanting him not to.

Weeks went by and she had almost forgotten when she heard John's call. Only days before, Louise, on a strange impulse, had complained of the things she hated to a farm hand driving her. He did not know how to reply when she lowered her head onto his shoulder. Frustrated by his non-response, she threw his hat off the buggy and drove to the farm without him. When John called, Louise took John as her lover because John thought that was what Louise wanted. Months later, afraid that Louise was pregnant, they married. Louise had wanted them to share their dreams but every time she tried to talk to John, he kissed her instead. Frustrated, she no longer wanted to be kissed. The pregnancy was a false alarm causing Louise to feel further trapped by her new life. Later, David was born and she alternated between hating and loving him. She told John that a boy did not need her love. If the baby had been a girl, she would have done everything in her power to make the girl's life happy.

"Terror" Summary Part IV

In the spring of the year that David Hardy was fifteen years old, Jesse Bentley bought swamp land and turned it into farm land. His neighbors snickered at him, but he had the land drained and the cabbages and onions he planted brought in a surplus of money. Jesse then bought two new farms plus new machinery to cut the cost of labor. He gave gifts to David and his sisters. That fall, David spent all of his free time outdoors, typically in the woods gathering nuts. He would sometimes play with other boys from the countryside but he did not like to hunt with them. Occasionally he would think about what it meant that he was almost a man, but usually he was content as a boy. One day, he killed a squirrel with his slingshot and the Bentley sisters cooked it for dinner. After that, he carried his slingshot regularly.

His grandfather stopped him one morning and took David along on an important matter. Jesse allowed him to bring his bag of nuts because they were driving into the woods. He had that unfocused look in his eyes which scared David. The buggy paused near grazing sheep. Jesse and his grandson caught a lamb which had been born out of season and David was permitted to hold it as they continued along. His grandfather sat silently, thinking of his lifelong devotion to God. When Jesse had seen the lamb the day before, he realized it gave him the chance to make a sacrifice to God. He wished he had thought of it before Louise was born but hoped that the pyre they would make for the lamb would allow God to speak to Jesse. Jesse thought that God would alert David to the path he should follow as a man. As the buggy reached the same spot in the woods where Jesse's fanaticism had scared David once before, David's mind whirled with plans of escape for himself and the lamb.

In a clearing, Jesse prepared a pile of sticks and set them on fire. He decided he would have to put the blood of the lamb on David's forehead and he started toward the boy with a large knife. David froze with fear, letting go of the lamb. The lamb ran quickly away and David followed. He ran rapidly until reaching the creek and then turned with his slingshot in hand. Jesse was running after him with the knife, looking for the lamb. David shot a rock from his slingshot and hit Jesse in the head. As Jesse fell to the ground, David feared he had killed him. Weeping, he proclaimed that he did not care and that he would be a man and never return to Winesburg. Jesse woke groggily, unsurprised by David's absence, and began to speak about God. Jesse continued to speak only in this manner for the rest of his days. He claimed that a messenger from God had taken David because of Jesse's greediness for glory.

"Godliness" Analysis Part I:

Godliness is presented, as is typical in Anderson's stories, in an elegiac tone. The household picture is drawn with Jesse and his sisters out in front before we are transported into the past. The narrator gives the reader an historical summary of the Bentley property and the hard work ethic carried by the Bentley descendants. The picture of the Bentley man is established as we are told that Tom and his sons were tough and worked long hours. They would escape to the saloons where their passions could be released. Enoch had nearly killed his father once. This type of brute manliness was accepted and expected.

When Jesse is introduced, he immediately sets up a great contrast between the type of man he is and the the men his father and brothers were. Anderson writes, "By the standards of his day Jesse did not look like a man at all. He was small and very slender and womanish of bodyŠ" In comparison to the imagery of strong tall trees and hard labor which encompassed the word choice in the description of Jesse's father and brothers, the character description of Jesse contrasts drastically. And yet Jesse turns out to be the strongest of all the men. He outlives the other men in his family and builds the farm up to work more productively and efficiently than ever before. Ironically, Jesse is the character who more befits the symbolism of a tree. He is hard to his dying father and his overworked wife, allowing them to slip into the background. He overwhelms all of the space around him.

Jesse's tragedy is his tendency to ignore all human life around him and all of his emotional sensibilities in order to drive toward a goal of money or power. He is a metaphor for the theme of disillusioned modern man, driven to a point where his senses have been anesthetized and his communal bonds are broken. Jesse is the only brother who left the farm to live in the city. When he returns to the farm, he is an emotional brute. Overcome by a need for power, Jesse ignores the living and reaches out toward God. He had chosen a life of religion before he was called back to the farm. With the power the farm gives him, his ego grows to huge proportions and Jesse calls out to God, expecting Him to answer. The allusions to the biblical Jesse highlight Anderson's satirical view regarding religion in this context. Jesse's religiosity has made him a monster more than a man. He is driven by a selfish desire to control his own destiny, foreshadowing David's need to knock him down. Anderson gives us the hint in the text, "'Suppose,' [Jesse] whispered to himself, 'there should come from among them one who, like Goliath the Philistine of Gath, could defeat me and take from me my possessions.'"

"Godliness" Analysis Part II:

David Hardy symbolizes the chosen one. He has the power to make everyone in Jesse's farm happy and symbolizes to Jesse that his luck has changed with God. As a young boy, David tries to run away from the unhappiness in his life and return to the farm. For David, the farm represents the archetypal patterns of existence, rebirth, fertility, initiation, sacrifice and so on. He is allowed to start over, barely remembering his birth mother,and is given a new mother in Jesse's sister. The pastoral theme is in effect as the young boy experiences the wonders of living out on the farm among the farm animals and green, open spaces. There had been a void in David's life because of his mother's noninvolvement and this void is filled at the Bentley farm.

David also represents the Biblical David from David and Goliath. Yet he does not yet know that his grandfather is the one he will destroy. To Jesse, David fulfills the void in his life left by an unfulfilled prayer to God on the night of Louise's birth. David is reborn as Jesse's child. Yet Jesse cannot leave good enough alone. When he takes David out into the woods, Davis is able to see the monster in Jesse's artificial religiosity. He cloaks it on hoping to bring himself power and recognition from God. David looks into his eyes and runs away. Wanting love, David is presented hunger and a pastoral he had found at the farm is broken and grotesque.

"Surrender" Analysis Part III:

The title seems oddly out of place because at no point in the story does Louise Bentley or Hardy surrender to live the life she is pressed upon to live. As a young girl she strives to please and be loved. As she is not by first her family, she looks to the Hardy girls and again is let down. Finally she looks to John Hardy and makes him come to her. Again, she is not happy but she refuses to be quiet. Instead of surrendering to a drab, half-dead existence as Elizabeth Willard leads, Louise strikes out against the society who has failed her and trapped her in a position of subordination. She is not successful in her protest other than causing a stir but the reader gains extreme respect for her.

Louise supplies some of the most forward thinking and liberated comments of the collection of short stories. She is insightful and tells her husband, without pretense, that a man had a better chance in the world which is why she did not need to give her son love. We cannot agree with her treatment of David, but the ironic title allows the reader to experience how little Louise allows herself to surrender to the sexual mores and gender stereotypes of the time.

Louise is, thematically, a universal character. She is grotesque as we are all grotesque because she wishes to be loved. Her outreach to the many different characters are not rewarded and this makes her crazy in the end. The narrator establishes this universal feel when remarking, "Before such women as Louise can be understood and their lives made livable, much will have to be done. Thoughtful books will have to be written and thoughtful lives lived by people about them." Louise was a product of her environment and society. She is looked at by Winesburg as a lunatic, a grotesque monster. The description of this woman as a monster gives the reader a barometer by which to judge the true monstrous representation of man and extreme religiosity in "Godliness", Jesse Bentley.

"Terror" Analysis Part IV:

The simple storytelling of the mock narrator underlies the current of this story. The beginning draws a parallel in David's life to the life of his mother. Each at fifteen, took an adventure. During the analysis of "Nobody Knows" we examined how Anderson often employs this term in as hyperbole, exaggerating the experience to be had by the character. The characters feel that they are undertaking a gigantic journey or life changing activity whereas normally each short story is a static episode where nothing changes. The characters intend to take a change or a move but usually fell short because of their own grotesquerie. As for David's adventure, he would leave Winesburg, running from his family forever. In this case, the term "adventure" is no hyperbole but actually functions as an understatement taking advantage of our preconceived expectations. However, David does not intend to take any adventure. He is content in his place in life, a boy's place, and is thrown abruptly out of this.

The narrator foreshadows the negative experience to come by using foreboding adjectives, like "heavy" to describe the crops, and by locating the story in late fall. Symbolically this represents a time of death and darkness. Jesse had made money in the spring by using machinery to take over more and more land. He has replaced his workers with machines. The machines are a metaphor for the modernization that was dehumanizing the face of society. In this atmosphere, David learns to shoot animals emphasizing the tone of death and decay. Ironically, the more Jesse employed machinery to his land, the more he also reconnected himself to God and the claims to God he had held when David was younger. The parallel elements in his interests were control and power. Jesse's wish to sacrifice a young lamb is a harbinger of bad luck as Jesse will sever his relationship with his beloved grandson. Spring and rebirth are symbolized by the young lamb. Ironically, David becomes the David of the Bible as Jesse had always wished only as a result of Jesse's monstrous attempt of sacrifice. The archetypal patterns of rebirth and sacrifice collide and David uses his slingshot, aptly provided for him by the clever narrator, to knock down his grandfather. David believes Jesse is dead because to him, and allegorically, Goliath must be killed by David. David is symbolically made into a man with this action and this textually runs off to become a man as well. The allegorical story illuminates the downfall of a man willing to sacrifice societal ritual for his own gain and the modern rite of passage as a boy breaks from his communal bonds to a live a life alone and stripped of his past.

"A Man of Ideas" Summary

Joe Welling was a small man who lived with his grey, silent mother beyond Main Street. He had a reputation for being odd because of his frequent and uncontrollable seizures of speech. The seizures were not physical but mental. Joe normally remained quiet until a seizure came forth. He would then pounce on the nearest bystander and spew on them a rush of thoughts and theories. He would pound on his chest and demand attention. Joe worked for the Standard Oil Company as an agent in Winesburg and the surrounding towns. Silently and professionally he went about his business until one of the outbursts would take hold of him. The townspeople watched him wearily, not afraid of him but aware that his eruptions were overwhelming.

One day, men stood in West's Drug Store discussing a horse race. Joe Welling burst into the store and turned on Ed Thomas. Ideas flew from his mouth concerning the water being high in Wine Creek although it had not rained. Joe had been confused before realizing that it had rained in Medina County where the Creek began. The Creek had brought them the news, he ranted. Joe then left the store, silent again. George Willard had come into contact with Joe after George became reporter of the Winesburg Eagle. Joe felt that he should have George's job since he was so talented at finding stories. He wanted George to write about fire as decay and how everything in the world was on fire. After George had been on the paper for a year, Joe's mother died and Joe moved into the New Willard House. He formed the Winesburg Baseball Club so he could be the manager and gained the respect of the town because of the Club's winning ways. Under his influence, the boys followed his every move. The opposing teams became distracted and made errors.

At this time, Joe also began a love affair with Sarah King. Sarah's father, Edward, and brother, Tom, were overly proud and violent but Joe did not seem frightened. The town laughed at the odd pair and the loud protestations of love they heard coming from Joe as he and Sarah walked together. The town worried that Joe would get hurt when a meeting was planned between him and the King men. George Willard anxiously overheard the men waiting for Joe in his room at the Willard House. When Joe arrived holding weeds in his arms, George wanted to laugh. As soon as Joe began talking, George knew he would overwhelm the Kings as he did all others. Joe, absorbed in his ideas, lectured the men on the possibility of a new vegetable kingdom. Sarah had warned Joe not to tell them his ideas, but he thought that was foolish. He wondered what would happen if all the vegetables were swept away and they were left with none. Joe figured they would have to breed new vegetables from the grasses and weeds. As George listened, Joe persuaded the Kings to travel to their house so that he could share his ideas with Sarah. George watched from his window as the two Kings hurried to keep apace with Joe.

"A Man of Ideas" Analysis

As the text explains, Joe Welling was "like a tiny volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire." His fits are mental, the narrator tells us, even though we are also told that he experiences physical spasms. His fits represent a form of synecdoche, as they stand for the whole of the grotesque. His physical body is whole and healthy. Yet the inside of him he has a passion which he cannot always hold within. As with the other grotesques, he is normally a silent man but has a fire raging within, the lava of the volcano. However, unlike the other grotesques, Joe Welling does express his passion, in spurts. Expression is natural for him and Joe is happiest when is he able to give forth his feelings. As the narrator explains, "A peculiar smile came upon his lips." The simple simile given by the narrator comparing Joe to a volcano is very fitting. The words would become pent up inside Joe until they gushed forth, almost orgasmically. He would pounce on those around him, spilling his excitement over onto them.

Synecdochally, Joe illustrates the inner and outer persona of the grotesque characters by having a nearly split personality. He is polite and then overbearing, professional and then crazed. He allows the thoughts which gather in his head, however ludicrous, to be released. The first eruption he has concerns the Creek bringing Winesburg the news. The stream as news symbolizes the importance of communication. One of Anderson's theme is the grotesque as ineffectual communication, life in death. Joe stresses that even if the ordinary ways of communication were closed, the news would continue through natural means. The technological advances which have been made by modern society are inadequate compared to more human methods.

Joe is grotesque because he cannot control his outbursts nor is the content of his outbursts logical. However, he is able to find release and make contact with his fellow man without reliance on the manmade modern advances which further isolate humanity. Joe forces personal contact. The town gains respect for him when he runs a baseball team. The term team is very important as we see the communal bonds which Joe forms and helps manage. The team he coaches begins to move as one and they succeed. Through the awkward and spasmatic flailing of Joe Welling, his team can work together. Furthermore, when Joe begins a love affair with Sarah King, the town laughs because they can hear his loud love protestations. Yet it is one of the only love affairs which does not end unhappily or with feelings unfulfilled in the book. Joe conquers the Kings. The last name is chosen intentionally to symbolize, hyperbolically, that Joe's grotesque character is even more effective than a king because he is able to communicate. He befriends the violent, sullen King family and ties human bonds in a town devoid of many.

The colloquial language continually used by the narrator is purposely simplistic in order to highlight the contextual tones and themes. Details are included to give the reader a feel of the ordinary town life, such as the name of Wesley's Moyer's horse and how the Standard oil Company worked at that time. As we are lulled into the security of this daily language, Anderson heightens suspense by foreshadowing a negative scene to come. Before Anderson encounters the Kings, the narrator sets the dismal scene by describing the darkness and "empty and silent" hallways. This scene is contrasted by the figure of Joe carrying an armful of weeds and grasses. Into the dark scene, Joe brings pieces of nature. He is embracing the natural world, and with his strange story of a new vegetable kingdom he wins over the Kings. Joe takes advantage of his opportunities to communicate with others and grasp onto the natural order. Similarly, he uses his odd volcanic grotesquerie to endear himself to others.

"Adventure" Summary

Alice Hindman had lived in Winesburg all of her life. When she was sixteen and attractive, she dated Ned Currie, a man older than she who worked at the Winesburg Eagle before George Willard's time. He would come see her daily. When he planned to move to Cleveland and look for a job on a city newspaper, Alice, overcome by the excitement of their love, suggested that she go as well. She did not wish him to marry her yet as the expense would be too great, but she hoped they could live together and both work. Ned was touched and decided he would rather care for Alice properly as his wife when he was able than to make her his mistress. The night before Ned left,he and Alice went for a drive. The night was so overwhelming to the couple that Ned and Alice became lovers even though Ned had intended to protect her and wait. Upon leaving her, Ned told Alice that no matter what happened, they would have to stick together.

For awhile, Ned was lonely in Cleveland and unsuccessful in finding a job. He wrote to Alice constantly. He then moved to Chicago, made friends, met a woman whom he liked, and forgot about Alice. Alice, though, could not forget about Ned. At twenty-two, she took a job at Winney's Dry Goods Store soon after her father had died in order to save money and keep herself busy. Even when she was beginning to doubt Ned's return, Alice knew she could never give her body to anyone else after the night they had shared before Ned left. In her loneliness, she would imagine things to say to Ned and reasons to save her money for him. Ned's last words echoed in her mind, causing Alice to weep. At the age of twenty-five, Alice's mother remarried, further isolating Alice in her loneliness. Alice realized that she would become peculiar if she stayed so much from people so she joined the Winesburg Methodist Church and The Epworth League. When a middle-aged man, Will Hurley, offered to walk her home from a prayer meeting, she did not protest although her loyalty remained with Ned. She needed company and affection.

By the time Alice reached twenty-seven, when George Willard was only a boy, she was overcome by restlessness. She would arrange her bed so that it appeared as a person lay within it. One night, she arrived home to find the house empty. She undressed in her dark room. Standing by the window naked, she was possessed by a strange desire and ran outside. Alice had not felt so young in years and she wished to run through the streets naked. She wanted to make contact with another lonely human so she cried out to an old man walking past. He was partially deaf and did not hear her clearly. In her embarrassment, she fell to the ground, trembling. After he had gone, Alice crawled back to her house and into her room and wept. In anguish, Alice wondered what was wrong with her. She realized that even people in Winesburg must live and die alone.

"Adventure" Analysis

Alice, paralleling the struggles of the other grotesque characters we have encountered, is very quiet on the exterior while a passion boils underneath. She is an illustration symbolizing Anderson's greater idea and the theories set forth by the old writer of the prologue. Alice Hindman is limited by life denying truths and guilty of allowing them to run her life. She believes in love and tradition absolutely. Though an honorable effort, the narrator himself condemns Alice for her narrowsightedness in dealing with her loneliness. He states, "Šfor all of her willingness to support herself [Alice] could not understand the growing modern idea of a woman's owning herself and giving and taking for her own ends in life." Alice's blindness to the changing social mores limits her capacity to progress forward in life. She becomes consumed instead by the idea of herself and her memories. If she cannot have Ned, she will have no other.

This extremity of emotion brings her downfall. Her tendency to limit her own abilities by her nature of fixed habits or unmovable convictions isolates Alice from her community and distorts her features. She had once been a beautiful girl but grows into a woman with a head too large for her body. This is symbolic of her self-consumption. She grows to support the theme of life in death, living within her own imagination and memory to the point that her head is nearly expanding under the stress. She denies herself the reality of life by narrowing the experience to a dream world. By making absolute convictions, Alice refuses to meld her worlds of dream and reality together. Will Hurley, the man who walks her home from Church meetings, is an impostor into her narrowly constructed universe and thus she does not want to allow him to get close. Alice holds on to Ned and his promised love as an absolute truth.The reader understands Alice as a universal figure even though her extremity of conviction is rare. As Anderson felt was worthy of expressing, all humans wish to love and be loved. Once Alice finds what she believes to be love, she cannot let it go. Ned is simply the vessel for this desire. The two love and lust for each other, interchangeably, because it makes them feel good not because of any deeper feelings. The narrator relates, "[Ned] became excited and said things he did not intend to say and Alice, betrayed by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life, also grew excited." Once Ned no longer symbolizes the love as a person Alice desires, he becomes the metaphor for it, a form of metonymy. The narrator tells us that Alice did not want Ned or any man, but to be loved. We realize that the void Alice has created by adhering to an absolute truth is a love for herself.

Alice makes two attempts at rebirth, aligning with Anderson's use of archetypal patterns to show man's break from ritual. Alice first tries to start anew when her mother is remarried because she feels further isolated. Thus she joins new groups and attempts to recreate ties to her community. However she is unable to pass beyond her limiting life-denying truth. The second time is the climax of the short story. Rebirth is described more physically as Alice strips herself of her clothes and notes how much she would like to run naked like a newborn baby and feel another lonely human's body against her own. She calls out to any man, but the man walks on. The denial of Alice's cry for help symbolizes the cry of disillusioned modern man in a time of anesthetized materialism and industrialism. The episode ends, as is typical, cyclically and statically. Alice reaches the point of loneliness by the end which had been described in the beginning because, regardless of her attempts to move on, her search for communal bonds and humanity have been fruitless.

"Respectability" Summary

The narrator compares Wash Williams to a huge, ugly monkey one would see caged in a city park during summer. Anyone in Winesburg would have immediately identified such a monkey with Wash as he too was large and gruesome. Everything about Wash was dirty except for his hands. Wash was the telegraph operator of Winesburg. He had once been the best operator in Ohio, but in his current state he had been demoted to Winesburg. He rarely associated with the townsfolk except when he attended the saloon where he would drink huge quantities of beer before stumbling to his room at the New Willard House. He hated the people of the town. Women he viewed as bitches and men he pitied for being led around by bitches. Little attention was paid to Wash though once Mrs. White complained to the main operator's office about the uncleanliness of Wash's office but it came to nothing. The superintendent was determined to keep Wash employed out of a certain respect for him. The reason for Wash's hatred was told by Wash only to George Willard.

George had felt a profound curiosity whenever he looked into Wash's sunken face at the New Willard House. George sensed that although Wash was usually silent, he had something to say to George. One evening, George took a walk with Belle Carpenter and passed by the yard near the train station where they saw Wash apparently asleep. The next night, Wash and George took a walk down to the railroad tracks. They sat in silence until George asked Wash about his past. Wash angrily explained that his wife was dead as all women were dead to him. As the darkness fell, Wash's voice became lower and more monstrous. Yet, George sensed a poet in Wash and he was mesmerized. Wash revealed that he would tell George the story of his wife because he saw George kissing Belle Carpenter and did not want George to make the same mistake he had.

When young and handsome, Wash had married a girl whom he loved deeply. They moved to Columbus, Ohio because Wash was promoted to the job of dispatcher. Wash had managed to remain virginal until after marriage and he and his wife would spend their time together planting seeds in their new garden. Wash cherished his wife and would kiss her ankles as they planted. After two years, he discovered that his wife had acquired three lovers who would come to the house while Wash was working. Devastated, Wash silently sent his wife home with the money he had saved. When he sold the house, he sent that money as well. Soon Wash received an entreaty from his mother-in-law to visit. He waited in their parlor for two hours, wishing to forgive and forget his wife's betrayal. His wife finally entered the room. She was naked, stripped by her mother. The woman stood staring at the floor, ashamed, while her mother waited in the hallway. Wash paused in his storytelling before relating to George that he had not killed his wife's mother. Instead, Wash had only struck her with a chair before the neighbors ran in. Regretfully, he noted that his wife's mother died of a fever soon after. He would never have the chance to kill her. Sitting and listening, George felt as if he too had become "old and shapeless."

"Respectability" Analysis

The narrator takes greater control of this story from the beginning than he does in the majority of stories. Casually, he speaks directly to the reader and attempts to personalize the story. The reader then feels he can relate to the narrator and will more easily see the characters through his point of view. The hope is to make the reader feel as if she knows a man like Wash Williams. By introducing Wash as a figure which symbolizes a creature whom we all have ogled at, Wash becomes one of our own -- a grotesque of our own imagination, our own consciousness, and our own being, As the old writer of the prologue took people he knew in his own life and distorted them to fit into his idea of existence, the narrator is now asking the reader explicitly to do the same with Wash. One could say the universality of most of Winesburg's characters have asked the reader to personalize their figures but here the narrator has made the request explicitly. Wash is a figure so grotesque outwardly that he is compared to a purple, bloated monkey. And yet we must empathize with him once we learn his story. The theme of self in relation to the universe is expanded in this case as we must expand our definitions of self to include a man who pushes the boundaries of humanity to the extent that he is compared to an ugly animal. Similar to how an ugly monkey is put on display in a park and caged for viewers to judge is an understated reminder for the reader to be on guard. These figures are on display, are caged, and we are continually judging them and yet they symbolize each and everyone one of us. Furthermore, the monkey is described as whole and as beautiful in a way. The text states, "In the completeness of his ugliness [the monkey] achieved a kind of perverted beauty." This understanding functions a couple of ways for the reader. The hatred that Wash feels when we meet him and the love he had felt for his wife previously are absolute and thus beautiful but perverted. The absoluteness of his love and hate are unreconcilable and distort his emotive capabilities. Moreover the beauty of the monkey's ugly wholeness foreshadows how Wash will function a a character. The story he relates to George of his past is filled by ugly curses and spits of hatred. Yet, the narrator tells how George was mesmerized by its loveliness and poetic quality. Distorted and ugly, Wash's features melt away as he tells his story. A beauty underlies it which surpasses the grotesque and establishes a paradox. The narrator describes, "There was something almost beautiful in the voice of Wash Williams, the hideous, telling his story of hate."

The physical exterior of Wash further highlights the beauty of his inner character which has been betrayed by a life-denying hold on an absolute understanding of the world. Wash is an incredibly dirty man except for his fingers. The flawed narrator almost forgets to tell the reader about Wash's hands but then realizes he has left them behind. His shapely fingers are a form of synecdoche, representing the whole gentle and beautiful quality of man which lay beneath Wash's surface of dirtiness and hate. Ironically, Wash's name implies one who cleans. The name implies that the reader should wash away the exterior grime and find the beauty which lays beneath. George, as always, is the only character deemed worthy to be shown the beautiful, poetic underbelly of Wash. Wash feels a symmetry with George because of a kiss Wash witnesses between George and Belle Carpenter. George's presence allows the old man to tell his story of betrayal. His wife, a symbol of fertility, had deceived him. She held the seeds as they planted in the garden. This heavily symbolic action results in no fertilization and Wash's wife looks to other sources. Yet Wash still wants the woman until her mother strips her naked in front of him. Wash's innocence, symbolized by their life in the garden, alluding to the Garden of Eden, is destroyed and Wash's reality is ruined. His hatred has grown from his modern sense of disillusion as he is stripped from love and community in one fell swoop.

"The Thinker" Summary

Seth Richmond lived in a beautiful house which was now overshadowed by the large house built by Banker White. Seth would hear wagons of berry pickers drive by and wish that he too could giggle mindlessly. Seth's grandfather had built the house and passed it on to his son, Seth's father, Clarence Richmond. Clarence had been killed during a fight with a newspaper man over the printing of Clarence's name in conjunction with a school mistress. Clarence had been a passionate man, much admired by his neighbors. His wife, Virginia, was left with their son. She did not believe the rumors about her husband and insisted to Seth that Clarence had been a good man. Once she realized that her income was no longer sufficient, she learned to be a stenographer and found work. Virginia respected her son and would coddle him. She was rarely able to raise her voice to him and was perplexed why he did not act as most boys did. If she did manage to speak harshly, Seth's look would usually quiet her. Seth was typically a silent boy whom the town believed was very deep and overly passionate, like his father. Seth could think with great clarity but he was not as profound a thinker as most imagined him to be. Many times he would not involve himself with others or participate in the activities of children his age because he was simply not interested. He wished he could feel as passionately about things as his friend, George Willard. When he was sixteen, Seth had run off with two other boys to a distant town fair. They slept on straw and stole food. Seth was ashamed of his actions but explained to his mother upon returning that he would have been more ashamed of himself if he had not stayed until the end of the adventure. Although furious with him, Virginia again could not reprimand him.

At eighteen, Seth was lonely and began to think it was an unavoidable part of his character. One evening, Seth went to visit George Willard, who was the older of the two boys. Inside the New Willard House, Seth overheard the voices of Tom Willard and his guests arguing over politics. He wished he could become as excited about things as Tom Willard or talk as much as Tom's son, George Willard. With his job at the newspaper, George ran around the town finding stories on as many Winesburg citizens as possible. He was proud of his distinction as a writer and would constantly tell Seth about his promising future. As Seth entered his room this one evening, George related to him that he wanted to write a love story. He would have to fall in love and he wanted to love Helen White. Since Seth knew her best, George pleaded with Seth to tell her for him. Seth was enraged and abruptly said goodbye. When George questioned him, Seth told George to ask Helen himself and stormed out of the room. However, Seth was determined to speak with her, only not about George. Seth had thought of Helen often and held her to be something personal of his. They had known each other for years and for a time, Helen had continually written Seth letters. He had never responded but was flattered and appreciated that he was preferred by the prettiest, wealthiest girl in town. Seth walked along the streets thinking of how George always had something to say to anyone in Winesburg.

When Seth arrived at Banker White's house, Helen opened the door and blushed. They walked out together and Seth revealed to her a plan to leave town upon which he had decided. He had realized how separated from the town he felt and decided the best answer was to go to a city, like Columbus, and find work where he would be more useful. The two stopped by a fence nearby a man and woman speaking softly. After the older couple kissed, Helen placed her hand in Seth's. Feeling dizzy, Seth regrettably divulged George's request. He also began to think about how he would like to remain in town and become close to Helen. Seth pictured a spot where he would love to lie with her. Awkwardly, Seth released Helen's hand and again tried to impress her with his plans to move away. Helen's thoughts suddenly shifted from romance to practicality, as she recognized that Seth was already a man. Seth told her how he hated that everyone in town talked so much but did very little. Not knowing what else to say, he told her how they would never see each other again. Saddened, Helen urged Seth to tell his mother immediately of his plans instead of walking her home. Seth nearly ran to catch Helen as she left but could only stand and watch her in confusion. To make himself feel better, Seth decided that Helen would turn out like everyone else in town. Walking home, he told himself that he would never find love. Love would only come to those who talk a lot, like George Willard.

"The Thinker" Analysis

Seth Richmond is another grotesque who is best described as fitting within the theme of life in death. It is a symbolic description as he is not a walking dead figure but a vibrant young man, but his silent exterior functions as symbolic death. Seth is unable to express himself, causing his passion to live inside and his silence to live outside. Ironically Seth does not even know that he holds life inside. He wishes he were more excitable like Tom Willard or Abner Groff, men who are held up metaphorically by the narrator and recognized by Seth as models of outwardly passionate men. They are metaphors for what Seth wishes he could be. And yet the narrator notes that the town sees a fire in Seth's eyes and thus looks at him differently. His own mother is scared enough of him after the age of fifteen that she does not enter his room at night. Thus Seth represses the passion inside of him, anesthetizing his senses, and feels empty. The narrator tells the reader that Seth had begun to think that being lonely was simply a part of his character. Seth is numb. He is a symbol of the modern world where men are mere husks of humanity, isolated from one another and their own sensibilities. Seth believes the answer for him is away from a small town where people know him. He wants to move to a city where, as he tells Helen White, "I just want to work and keep quiet. That's all I've got in my mind."

The artifice of the materialistic age which Anderson's generation was entering is symbolized by Seth's need to put up a front for Helen in hopes of impressing her with his ambition instead of telling her how he really feels about her. Thanks to the mind invading narrator, we know that Seth is thinking about how much he wants to stay in Winesburg and imagining how he could spend his time with Helen. Yet, he is not able to express his desires and instead tries to impress. A climactic moment in the story comes between Seth's daydream of the pastoral image where he and Helen are involved in love-making beneath an idyllic tree surrounded by high flowers and bunches of bees and Seth's speech to Helen about how he must work because he has become a man. The contrast between Seth's vision for happiness and the picture he paints for Helen is great. The moment which lies between these two pictures is synecdochal as the motion Seth makes represents the whole of the change in his demeanor and the break in his tie to Helen. The text reads, "Releasing the hand of the girl, he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets." This is the point where Seth fails to communicate his true wishes and loses his opportunity to reach his dreams.

The hands are very significant as we have seen in many of the grotesques such as Wing Biddlebaum and Dr. Reefy. Seth tells Helen that he does not want to spend his life talking and not doing. He wants to become a mechanic. Thus we gather that he wants to use his hands to express himself. Reading the climactic moment of Seth's release of Helen's hand with this in mind, we understand how he has let go of a human tie to Helen and the passion he holds inside, and has given himself over to the artifice of talk he does not believe in. Once Helen hears his ambitious plans, "[c]ertain vague desires that had been invading her body were swept away and she sat up very straight on the bench." After she leaves, Seth wonders why she has gone but thematically the reader understands that he has shorn his ties to community and replaced love with artifice and ambition.

"Tandy" Summary

A young girl lived alone with her father, Tom Hard. Her mother was dead. Tom Hard was absorbed by religion and often ignored the girl. Tom declared himself to be agnostic and spent much of his time trying destroy the belief in God which invaded the minds of his neighbors. A stranger came to Winesburg with whom he became good friends and spent much time. The stranger had come hoping to kick his drinking addiction by escaping to a small town. In actuality, the monotony of the small town led him to drink heavier. One night, he wandered toward the New Willard House suffering from a day or more of drunkenness. Noticing Tom Hard with his young daughter of five on his lap and George Willard sitting in front of the House, the stranger sat down with them. A prophecy babbled from the stranger's lips.

Looking off into the distance and crying, the stranger explained how he had come to quit drinking but had failed. He told them how he was also addicted to love. Never finding the object of his love, his destruction was inevitable. The stranger proclaimed that he had not lost his faith, but that his faith was unattainable. Staring now at the young girl, the stranger expressed to her how he had missed his love but a woman was coming. Maybe this young girl was she. He knew about this woman's struggles although he had never met her. From her defeats, a new quality in women was born which he named Tandy. Tandy was a quality "of being strong to be loved" which men need from women. The stranger dropped to his knees in front of Tom Hard and kissed the young girl's hands. He pleaded with her to be strong, to be better than man or woman, to be Tandy. The stranger then stumbled away.

A few days later, Tom Hard took his daughter to a relative's home to which she was invited. He began again to think of destroying man's faith in God. When he said his daughter's name, she wept. Bitterly crying out and shaking, the girl demanded to be called Tandy Hard. No matter how much her father tried to sooth her, the young girl could not be quieted.

"Tandy" Analysis

From beginning to end, the reader is not once told the young girl's name. We know that she will take on the name the stranger has given her by the end of the story and become Tandy Hard but what her first name is before the renaming we do not know. Her father's name is Tom Hard but the stranger is also never given a name by the narrator. One has to doubt that the narrator who knows, or at least is willing to guess, what most characters are thinking does not know the name of Tom Hard's daughter or the stranger he befriends. Thus the reader must wonder why these two main characters are kept anonymous, nameless, and without identity. Do they represent the empty shells of anesthetized humanity we have experienced with other grotesques? What is the narrator trying to tell us about naming and renaming?

Tandy Hard does not find herself and her strength of expression until her meeting with the stranger and her adoption of his name, Tandy. The stranger, an allegorical type of character, transforms the life of the girl who had earlier been ignored. The narrator establishes her previous existence negatively. Though still living with her father after her mother's death, the girl is given little attention. Her father's time is spent trying to destroy his neighbors' devotion to God. Her father is a destroyer not a creator which fits into the theme of void and absence in the forgotten life of the little girl. The story begins with a sentence which emphasizes the negative quality of her life. The text reads, "Until she was seven years old she lived in an old unpainted house on an unused road that led off Trunion Pike." The word choice employed by Anderson's mock oral narration tells us what was not done to the house and the road. The house was NOT painted and the road was NOT used. This first sentence is symbolic of the girl's existence before her meeting with the stranger. Her name, like her presence, is NOT important.

The stranger's character is a failed man. He has come to Winesburg on a mission to stop drinking and has instead increased his alcoholism. He cannot stop absorbing drink, filling himself with liquor. This addiction to consume implies that the stranger has an emptiness inside which he tries to fill with drink. This is why he is given no name, but is able to give the girl a name. The void he feels is a result of not finding love. In a scene heavy with religious overtones, the stranger becomes a prophet of sorts. The narrator tells us that he stared forward as if seeing a vision and then looked into the girl's eyes and renamed her. In this manner, Anderson is alluding to the prophet John the Baptist who leads the way for the Christ to come. His passing is not as important as the savior to follow but he prophesies the event. Similarly, the stranger states, "'There is a woman coming." He cries that he knows about the woman's struggles and understands the deep inner need of man and woman to be loved. As Christ could be said to be the son of man, the stranger is predicting that Tandy will be the new form of woman, a universal character representing a new love and understanding.

The religious symbolism continues with the kissing of the savior's hands and the use of the word "ecstatic". The text describes, "[The stranger's] body rocked back and forth and he seemed about to fall, but instead he dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and raised the hands of the little girl to his drunken lips. He kissed them ecstatically." After the all important kiss, the ceremony is completed and the stranger leaves, branding the young girl as Tandy. She refuses to be called another name, symbolizing her acceptance of this role to "be something more than man or woman." This name defines the girl and gives her meaning, more than the negative descriptions given by the narrator. The broken communal bonds are given a rebirth in the renaming of Tandy as this allusion to Christianity provides more a stable view of religious faith than the stories concerning religious people.

"The Strength of God" Summary

Reverend Curtis Hartman, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, was a quiet man and often dreaded speaking from the pulpit on Sunday. Before the sermons on Sunday morning, he would retire to the study in the bell tower to pray for God's help. The Reverend's wife, Sarah, was a stout woman whose father had given her five thousand dollars on her wedding day. He manufactured underwear in Cleveland and promised her an inheritance of twice that. His position as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church gave him a higher status and salary than the other pastors, and his own carriage. The Reverend was well liked in town because he was solemn and earnest, though he often wished he could arouse more enthusiasm among his parishioners.

One Sunday morning during the summer, Curtis was in the study with its one window open. On the window was a design of Christ, his hand upon the head of a child. Through the window, the minister was shocked to see a woman in the next house lying in bed and smoking while she read a book. He quickly shut the window, horrified that he had viewed such sin and had seen the bare shoulders and neck of a woman. His sermon that Sunday gained fervor as he spoke to reach the ears of the sinful woman he had seen. The house next to the Church belonged to Aunt Elizabeth Swift and her daughter Kate Swift, the school teacher. As Curtis remembered hearing that Kate had been to Europe and New York City, he wondered if her smoking was not a big deal. The minister did not want to think of other women, but he thought of Kate Swift. His sermons became wholly directed at her and he wanted to see her bare body again.

On a Sunday he could not sleep, the minister rose early and found a stone along the street with which he broke a corner out of the window in the bell tower so he could see into Kate's room. As Aunt Elizabeth pulled Kate's shade open, the minister breathed a sigh of relief that she had saved him from his carnal desires. That Sunday, he did not deliver his sermon. Instead, Curtis informed his parishioners that ministers also struggle with temptation and that he had surrendered to his. In order to be saved, the people had only to raise their eyes to God as he had. The minister then tried to forget about Kate Swift and focus on his wife. However, Curtis soon discovered that Kate Swift would lie in bed at night reading with her shoulders and neck bare. He sat watching her for hours before finally running into the streets and praying. The minister refused to believe that he wanted Kate Swift. He blamed his wife for being ashamed of passion. His soul was troubled for weeks. As the weather grew colder, Curtis sat three times in the darkness and peered through his hole. The minister told himself that if he only could resist the temptation to lift his eyes toward the window, he would be cured.

One night in January the minister could not resist running to the bell tower. He had finally decided to allow himself to think of kissing Kate's shoulders. He thought about becoming a business man and giving himself completely to sin. The room in the bell tower was bitterly cold but the minister sat and waited for Kate Swift to appear. He passed in and out of consciousness before she came. The naked woman threw herself on the bed and punched the pillow, before dissolving in tears to her knees and praying. The minister stumbled from the Church and ran into the Winesburg Eagle where George Willard was working on a story. Curtis moved toward George feverishly. He anxiously explained how God had presented Kate Swift as a sign of a greater truth though the minister had mistakenly first understood her as an object of lust. The minister held up his bloody fist to George. With God's help, he had broken the window. It would have to be completely replaced. Curtis believed that he had been delivered.

"The Strength of God" Analysis

Reverend Curtis Hartman is another grotesque who cannot express the passion inside of him, representing the theme of life in death. The minister instead speaks only as much as he must. People like him because he does not offend and is unpretentious. In fact, he wonders if he really has the fire for God necessary to be a minister and wishes he could cry his devotion from the rooftops. Yet he is too timid and unsure of himself to do little more than deliver his carefully prepared sermons. Hartman's character parallels the character of Seth Richmond who wishes he could become more excited because he represses his emotions. He has become the anesthetized man of modern society, unable to connect to his fellow man. He is a religious man, illustrating Anderson's satiric view of modern religion. His theme of disillusioned modernity shows that religion is disconnected and detached. The minister is not a man who has been spoken to by God or feels that religion is his intended path in life. He represses his passions for life, marries a woman in a long courtship because that is the ritualistic pattern one is supposed to follow, and shares the money made by an underwear manufacturer.

When the minister's passion is revived it is not because of God but because of a woman's sexuality. Ironically, as the minister prayed for a greater power of God, he noticed Kate Swift's bare shoulders through his window. This window is a view into the hypocrisy of the minister's soul. Not only does he see Kate Swift through an open window which has an image of Christ patting a boy's head, but he later breaks that window to be able to continue to see Kate after it is too cold to keep the window open. Christ and his faith do not allow the minister to break free of his inhibitions, a woman's body does. By tarnishing the face of religion in this manner, we further understand the broken archetypal patterns of modern man Anderson was commenting on. The bell tower had but one window and the reverend manipulated its image, breaking it with a rock, to become a voyeur for his sexual appetite. A young boy who is true to his religious faith then is cut by the shard of glass left by the broken window. This boy is a metonym for the disunity of man and religion.

Through the crack in the window, Curtis can only see the shoulders and neck of Kate Swift. He experiences her naked beauty in fragments. He strips himself from his own home three time during the winter in order to see one fragment of Kate's body and yet he loves her body. Her fragmented body symbolizes to Curtis the lust he never was able to experience and the sin his ministry is keeping him from. Much like the more recently published novel by Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children, man sees woman through a partitioned space, a fragmented whole. Anderson, in his time, was using this broken window as a metaphor for the fragmented sense of self in the modern world and the hypocrisy of religion in the context of the detached sense of man from community.

As a voyeur into a world where he is not repressed or conditioned, Curtis finds freedom every time he sneaks away from reality. The weather grows colder and the nights darker to symbolize his descent toward lust and sin. He revives his relationship briefly with his wife but then becomes angry at her for cheating him of his animal instinct. The minister is never able to look within himself for revival. In very much a satire style, Anderson shows the minister make Kate Swift, the object of his lust, into an icon of the church so that he can be freed of his desire for her. The message of truth she bears is the broken, hypocritical disunity of the fabric of society.

"The Teacher" Summary

Snow lay heavily on Winesburg, Ohio and the town was talking about it. George Willard was pleased that he had no work to do. He took a pair of skates up to the pond but did not skate. He built a fire to sit by and think of Kate Swift, his former teacher. The previous night, she had invited George to borrow a book from her. They had spent an hour together and she gave him the feeling that she may be in love with him. He was excited and annoyed. Soon he returned home and hugged a pillow as if it were Kate. The pillow then became Helen White in his eyes, whom he half loved.

As the night grew later, it grew bitterly colder and the streets emptier. Hop Higgins was the night watchman and he quickly checked all of the doors along Main Street. After he had made sure all were locked, he retired to the New Willard House to tend the stove. Hop would sit half awake for the entire night, reflecting on his dream to breed ferrets. George sat in his office at the Eagle pretending to work but thinking of love. Reverend Hartman sat alone in the bell tower. Kate Swift began a walk, driven into the streets by her bewildering thoughts. Her doctor had warned her to watch her health to avoid becoming deaf but Kate forgot about this warning now. Feeling bold and anxious, Kate walked around much of the town in the cold. Her character tended to be stern but the townspeople and her pupils seemed to like her. Her students would experience moments where Kate Swift was happy and charismatic. During these periods, her stories would incite great laughter. Largely though she was cold toward the children in her class, and to life in general.

A passion burned inside of her, though heavily guarded, and struggled inside of her on this night. She had seen a genius inside of George Willard while he was her student and had since then attempted to persuade him to do something with his genius. Kate felt that she could do it. She encouraged George to take his writing seriously and to work toward understanding people's thoughts. The evening before, Kate had spoke to George in great earnestness and her intensity had become mixed with a sort of passion. Kate's passion was directed at helping George understand the important lessons of life. Kate noticed how George was growing into a man and, leaning forward, she kissed him. George was confused and Kate embarrassed. She quickly reprimanded him for being too young to understand.

On this next night, Kate was lonely after her walk so acted when she saw a light on at the newspaper. The fire burning inside of her poured out into words and she spoke to George about life, hoping to open the door of understanding for him. The passion she felt became physical again and Kate tried to leave. But looking at George, she saw a man and wanted to be loved. He came toward her and she fell against him. After a moment, George felt Kate's fists beat against his face before she ran away. George stood stunned as Reverend Hartman stumbled in. He told George how he had been delivered by Kate Swift, a messenger of truth sent by God. George went home, undressed in the dark, and got into bed thinking of the minister's insane words. His resentment passed and he tried to understand what had happened with Kate. George finally decided that he must have missed what she was trying to tell him.

"The Teacher" Analysis

Another grotesque with a passion inside of her which she cannot express comes to us in the form of Kate Swift, the teacher. It is important to examine her role in the town as teacher. Her profession is one which requires that she relay information to people on a daily basis. She is responsible for their attaining knowledge. In this manner, she symbolizes a medium of communication in much the same way as George Willard does in the collection of short stories. She must aid children as they absorb and expand knowledge. This comparison draws an implicit literary connection between the characters of Kate Swift and George Willard which is solidified textually as they struggle to understand each other.

Their parallel roles place George in a different light to Kate. She sees him as a genius. The reason he seems like a genius to her is because of way in which he was able to use words. A manipulation of words endears his character to her. Words speak to her, communicate to her, through the figure of George Willard who is functioning as Anderson's medium for the grotesques. The importance of words and the significance Kate places on George's desire to be a writer illuminates the language of the story. The time the two are standing together as Kate tries to impress George with the difficulty of becoming a writer, the narrator describes the scene lyrically and notes that "a passer-by might have thought them about to embrace." The scene becomes a love scene because of the influence of language and the artistry of words.

Kate's words to George symbolize the tragic life in death theme which Anderson has constructed throughout the text. She states, "You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say." She is voicing the problem which had come about because of the isolation and disillusionment of modern man. Words are artifice unless they express the inner being of man. The language Anderson and his narrator employ hope to leave the reader with a message. The message is not absolute. It cannot be in order to follow Anderson's theory of life. Yet the reader is given the symbolism and commentary which can lead them to draw their conclusions based on the themes Anderson feels are the most important to discuss. Kate is looking to George to share her hunger for life and language but she does not know how to tell him explicitly.

As the confusion of modern communal bonds grew, Kate's passion becomes transformed into a physical desire to satisfy her loneliness. The narrator relates, "A great eagerness to open the door of life to the boy, who had been her pupil and who she thought might possess a talent for the understanding of life, had possession of her." She yearns for someone to understand her. However, in her loneliness, she grasps for George absolutely and for the wrong reasons. She is not in love with him. She lusts for personal contact and understanding. The static moments illustrated in the short stories usually end in disappointment and disillusionment, The grotesque's mission fails and nothing in reality has changed. Ironically, it is within this story, not "The Strength of God" where Kate symbolizes the message of truth. She is the truth of a generation who has a passion without a place and a self displaced from the universe. George is unable to make the mental leap from self to the universal and misses her message. Though a medium, he is not released from being a boy. Through his memory and experience, however, the reader is able to watch the struggle Kate Swift undertakes.

"Loneliness" Summary

Enoch Robinson lived with his mother, Mrs. Al Robinson, as a boy and was known during his time at Winesburg High School as quiet and intellectual. After high school, Enoch moved to New York City, took a French class, and attended art school. He wanted to be an artist but never applied the necessary effort or showed the necessary maturity. Enoch would forever be a child who could not get things right. He was made lame in a street car accident. One time he was arrested for drunkenness and another time he tried to start an affair with a woman on the street but became frightened and ran away. Young artists would gather in his room and talk passionately for hours about the trends of art and artists. Enoch would sit off to the side, rarely participating in the conversation. The discussion of his own paintings would annoy him especially and Enoch wished he could cry out. There were stories and people which were hidden behind the life in his paintings and the visitors always missed them. After a while, because Enoch began to doubt the ideas expressed in his paintings, he stopped inviting over his artist friends. He replaced them with friends of his imagination who would say the right things. They were many of the people he had run into in the past now molded into characters whose company he enjoyed. In their company, Enoch could speak last and best.

When Enoch got lonely for flesh and blood, he married a girl who sat next to him at art school. They moved to Brooklyn and had two children. After his marriage, Enoch played a responsible adult. He found a permanent job illustrating for advertisements. He voted in elections, paid taxes, and felt very proud of his efforts. However, after a while, Enoch began to feel trapped in his family life. He would invent engagements to allow him more free time to walk by himself. His mother died and Enoch inherited eight thousand dollars. This money allowed him to escape. He gave his family the money and told his wife he could no longer live with them. Secretly relieved, his wife took their children to Connecticut. Enoch moved into his old apartment and happily revisited his imagined friends. Then, something happened to transform Enoch into the old, bumbling man later seen around Winesburg. Old Enoch chose George Willard to tell his story because he empathized with a sadness which had invaded George's life.

It was a rainy night which pleased George because of his mood. After talking to Enoch for ten minutes, George was asked to accompany him to his room to talk. George was very curious and wished he could comfort the lonely, old man. Enoch told George about the woman who entered his apartment in New York and ruined his imaginary life. She lived in the building with Enoch and would visit him occasionally. Enoch was worried that she would drive everything away but he was overcome by a desire for her. As she kept coming to visit, Enoch would try to resist but always let her in. One night, Enoch snapped and yelled at the woman, trying to explain to her how big and important he was in his room. After ranting for awhile, Enoch noticed a look of recognition in the woman's eyes and it horrified him that she understood. At this point, Enoch drew back from George, not able to continue his story. George insisted he finish. Enoch told him how he had sworn and called this woman horrible names. When she left, all of his imagined people went with her. Enoch stopped and George Willard exited the room. As he left, George heard Enoch whimpering that his room had been comfortable and warm but now he was all alone.

"Loneliness" Analysis

The narrator tells the reader, "The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room almost more than it is the story of a man." Thus the descriptions of Enoch's little room in Manhattan must be understood as synecdoche. As we read about the room and its inhabitants we must apply it to Enoch and his character. As Enoch grew up in Winesburg, his mother's house lay dark because all the window blinds were kept closed. At this point, Enoch was described as a quiet, dense child. Thus Enoch's home symbolizes his personality and his outlook toward others. Enoch would walk to school with his nose in a book, not seeing the passing traffic. The darkness of his home is reflected in his character. As Enoch moves to New York, his surroundings become greater and so does his company. His interests expand and he is noted to have a circle of friends who joined him in his room often to discuss art. It is in the city as well where Enoch will push society away and create his own room of figures. The city here is a symbol of modern industrialism, forming an isolated disoriented man, detached from society.

By telling the reader, that "nothing ever turned out for Enoch Robinson," the reader then absorbs the rest of the story with narrower expectations. The tone is admittedly elegiac and the plot becomes one which will explain how Enoch has repeatedly failed instead of the discovery that he will fail. When we are told that his room is narrow, this symbolizes the type of life Enoch will lead in the city. He can stand the group of artist friends for awhile but he soon grows tired of their continuous talking about technique. His paintings are metaphors for Enoch's existence. The visitors only see the lines and technique inherent in each of Enoch's drawings and paintings. Enoch becomes increasingly annoyed by their oversight because in each painting he sees a people and events which were not drawn but implied. His imagination determines the story beyond each painting and the company has a blindness toward this sort of understanding. When he gets rid of all of his real visitors he creates a room full of imagined friends. In this environment Enoch's surreal existence can continue with him as a leader, the best speaker and the smartest artist.

Enoch is a creator paralleling the old writer of the prologue who has created the grotesque figures about which we read. He creates a universe and becomes master of it.Yet his belief in the fairy tale land is too absolute and he is unable to meld a life of reality and the surreal. Anderson believed that one must never lose sight of dreams or reality but should work with both. Thematically, he warns against grasping a truth as too absolute. Enoch personifies this quality of the absolute. He lives in an imaginary world until he grows weary of loneliness. Then he "plays" at being a husband and father in the real world, holding a real job and contemplating politics. This artifice cannot be retained by Enoch and he grows tired of this life and returns to the fantasy life. When a woman invades this life, he cannot compromise the two worlds once again and one must be destroyed. We knew that Enoch's attempts at happiness would be destroyed but the lesson lies in the story of Enoch's absolute hold on his particular truths which cannot be maintained.

"An Awakening" Summary

Belle Carpenter was a strong woman who sometimes wished that she was a man so that she could fight when angry. She lived with her father, Henry Carpenter, a bookkeeper who had made Belle's life miserable for years. He was petty and needed every detail of his life in complete order. As Belle grew older, the bully became frightened by her, mainly because she knew how he had treated her mother, and left her alone. Some evenings, Belle would walk out with George Willard although she secretly loved the bartender at Ed Griffith's saloon, Ed Handby. She was not sure she could control Ed and so relieved her built up passion through George. Ed Handby was a large, strong man who had inherited a farm when twenty-five. When sold, the farm brought in eight thousand dollars. He frivolously spent this money in six months on women, parties, and gambling. He also had a tendency to get into fights. However, Ed had recently decided that Belle was the woman he was meant to have. He wanted to settle down and support her as his wife but did not know how to tell her of his intentions. They had spent only one date together. Ed had rented a buggy and tried to express himself to Belle through his body, kissing her continuously against her will. Ed told Belle that he would have her no matter what.

Ed Handby saw George Willard as his only obstacle to Belle. One night, George stood in a pool hall talking loudly about women. He spoke for awhile until Art Wilson took over. George walked out into the streets and down by the frame houses, talking aloud and pretending he was an inspector of soldiers. He scolded the imaginary men, telling them how important order was. His own words hypnotized him as he continued to speak, commanding that he too must be in order with the motions of life. George paused, amazed by his thought process when alone. He had read many books lately. The books appeared to be brought to life as George walked behind the shed houses of the day laborers, looking in on their homes. He felt detached from existence. His thoughts had made him feel large and George rolled large words, like "death" and "fear", off of his tongue to represent this feeling. He walked to Belle Carpenter's house, hoping that she might understand him. George generally felt used by her but finally felt large enough change that.

George arrived at Belle's house after Ed Handby. Ed had threatened Belle, warning her to stay away from George or he would beat them both. Ed had visited Belle hoping to propose, but was unable. Belle was content to go with George because she saw Ed sitting in front of a neighbor's house and hoped he would watch her with George and suffer. She and George walked along for an hour and George told her of the changes in himself and how she would have to treat him like a man. When George kissed her, Belle did not resist but looked over his shoulder, waiting. George whispered more words into the air, words like "lust". Thinking of his newly found power, George had led Belle to a clearing in the brush and kneeled down beside her. Suddenly, Ed Handby appeared. Ed swept the boy into a nearby bush and bullied Belle. Humiliated, George tried to jump Ed three times but was thrown back into the brush. As he lay on the ground, George watched Ed lead Belle away by the arm. George walked home sullenly, surrounded by a world suddenly less magical. Later, George only felt anger and hate.

"An Awakening" Analysis

Though Anderson's table of contents focuses this short story on Belle Carpenter, the title refers mainly to an awakening had by George Willard. We experience his awakened sensibility through his relationship to Belle. We are able to contextualize George's awakening when we witness his encounters with Belle and how he is driven from her life. The irony of the awakening is that the story ends with George headed home, unchanged. The world seems less bright and he is discouraged. As with all of Anderson's tales, we must understand a title like this in the context of a static episode. The story illustrates a moment in the life of a grotesque figure, but not progress or productive revelation. Being s