Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio:The Lives of the

Grotesque

Established Goals

• To identify the theme of loneliness and frustration in small-town America.

• To understand how Anderson's writing style lends itself to the half-conscious thoughts and raw emotions of Winesburg's residents and their inability to express their deepest hopes and fears.

• To understand Anderson’s concept of grotesque characters, those who are typically stunted morally, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually and unable to articulate their feelings.

• To understand how Anderson’s grotesques gravitate toward George Willard, telling him their strange, often sad, stories in the hope that, in writing the stories of their lives, he will be able to impart dignity and meaning to their personal struggles and experiences.

Essential Questions• How does Anderson’s portrayal of small

town America differ from the stereotypical view many people have of small town life?

• What does Anderson mean by a grotesque character, and what causes these characters to become grotesque?

• What is George Willard’s function in the book?

• How do George’s experiences in Winesburg help him as he ventures into the world outside of Winesburg?

Sherwood Anderson

• Writer whose prose style, derived from everyday speech, influenced American short story writing between World Wars I and II.

• Anderson made his name as a leading naturalistic writer with his masterwork, WINESBURG, OHIO (1919), a picture of life in a typical small Midwestern town, as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants.

Sherwood Anderson Timeline

• Sherwood Berton Anderson was born on September 13, 1876 in Camden, Ohio.

• The third child of a harnessmaker and house painter who had a fondness for storytelling, Anderson received an uneven education.

• He married, had three children, and worked, with growing dissatisfaction, in the business world until 1909, when he suffered a nervous collapse.

• In Chicago, he encountered writers Carl Sandburg, Ralph Bell, Theodore Dreiser, and others associated with the Chicago Literary Renaissance, a flowering of letters sustained by a group of young writers many of whom, like Anderson, had come of age in small Midwestern towns in the late nineteenth century.

• 1884 Anderson family moves to Clyde, Ohio, the town where Anderson grows up, attends school, and holds many jobs to support the family. The town later becomes a kind of model for Winesburg, Ohio.

• 1895 At the mother’s death, the family breaks up. Anderson travels to Chicago, where he finds work as an unskilled laborer in cold storage warehouses. Attends night classes in business subjects.

1906 Moves to Cleveland, Ohio, to operate a goods-distribution company and makes his way successfully as an entrepreneur. Aims atfinancial greatness.1907 Moves to Elyria, Ohio, to operate another goods-distribution company and to continue an upwardly mobile life. In Elyria, thelast of his three children is born.1909 Starts writing fiction (which remains long unpublished) about unhappy manufacturers and financial moguls who need personaland sexual liberation.1912 Disillusioned with business and under psychological pressure, is afflicted late in November by aphasia, amnesia that hospitalizeshim and ends his Ohio business career and his traditional family affiliation.

1913 Returns to Chicago to earn his living by writing advertising copy; also writes fiction as part of the city’s artistic group. Becomesacquainted with Carl Sandburg, Edgar Lee Masters, Harriet Monroe, Margaret Anderson, Francis Hackett, Ben Hecht, FloydDell, and other Chicago Renaissance figures.

1914 Discovers the stylistically avant-garde writings of Gertrude Stein. Publishes “The Rabbit-Pen,” a traditional story in Harper’sand, in various “little magazines,” less traditional stories and essays about writing.

1915 Unhappy with writing derivative fiction, is in the winter suddenly inspired to write “Hands,” the first Winesburg, Ohio story.Successive stories about Winesburg come into being over many months.

1916 Is divorced from Cornelia and marries Tennessee Mitchell. Continues writing advertising copy and stories. Publishes his firstnovel, Windy McPherson’s Son, about an industrialist who has wealth but not happiness.

1917 Publishes his second novel, Marching Men, in which the hero finds meaning through organizing laborers into potentiallyeffective unions.

1918 Publishes Mid-American Chants, free-verse regional poetry reminiscent of Whitman and Sandburg. Lives in New York City andwrites movie publicity. Seeks publication of the Winesburg stories as a book.

1919 Winesburg, Ohio published May 8; reviews are mixed and sales scant.

1920 Lives briefly in Alabama and then in Palos Park, Illinois. Publishes Poor White, a novel about the industrialization of the Midwest.

1921 Visits Europe and meets Gertrude Stein and other writers. Publishes new stories as The Triumph of the Egg. Wins the Dial prize of $1,000 for his stories. By mail, introduces the young Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein and other authors in Europe.

1922 Finally abandons his work as an advertising writer and leaves his second wife and Chicago for New York City. Meets Elizabeth Prall, a bookstore manager and daughter of a successful merchant.

1923 Publishes Many Marriages, a novel about sexual liberation, and Horses and Men. Lives in Reno, Nevada, to obtain a divorce from Tennessee.

1924 Marries Elizabeth Prall. Moves to New Orleans, where he advises young William Faulkner. Publishes A Story Teller’s Story, his first autobiography.

1925 Publishes a financially successful novel, Dark Laughter, about psychological freedom. Visits the mountains of southwestern Virginia, where he buys a small farm.

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1926 Publishes Tar: A Midwest Childhood, an autobiographical novel and Sherwood Anderson’s Notebook, a collection of essays. Settles on his farm near Troutdale, Virginia, where he builds Ripshin, his only permanent house. Very briefly visits Europe, where he is depressed, uncomfortable with Hemingway, and uncommunicative with Stein

1927 Becomes owner, reporter, writer, and publisher of the two small Smyth County, Virginia newspapers, the Marion Democrat andthe Smyth County News. Publishes A New Testament, prose poetry.

1928 Meets and falls in love with Eleanor Copenhaver, daughter of a prominent family in Marion, Virginia, and a career social worker with the National Young Women’s ChristianAssociation.

1929 Publishes Hello Towns!, an anthology of small-town newspaper writings. Separates, despondent and perhaps suicidal, from Elizabeth.

1930 Begins traveling secretly with Eleanor to observe and write about labor conditions in southern manufacturing towns.

1931 Publishes Perhaps Women, a treatise on women’s potential to redeem men facing the difficulties of modern life.

1932 Is divorced from Elizabeth and continues courting Eleanor. Travels to a radical labor conference in Europe. Publishes Beyond Desire, a political novel about southern labor organizing.

1933 Travels across America to observe and write of depression-era social conditions for Today magazine. Marries Eleanor. Publishes his last collection of stories, Death In the Woods. Begins writing his final memoirs.

1934 Publishes No Swank, appreciative essays about his literary friends and their books. Continues to write social essays.

1935 Publishes Puzzled America, collected mostly from his Today magazine social essays.

1936 Publishes his last novel, Kit Brandon, about mountain moonshiners. Continues writing his memoirs.

1937 Publishes Plays: Winesburg and Others. Continues writing his autobiography.

1938 Visits and writes about Mexico. Continues his memoirs.

1940 Publishes Home Town, an illustrated treatise on the vanishing American small town and the best traditional American values once found there.

1941 Dies March 8 in Colon, Panama, while traveling with Eleanor to visit and write about life in South America. Leaves hismemoirs unfinished

The Chicago Literary Renaissance

The Chicago Literary Renaissance was the flourishing of literary activity in Chicago during the period from approximately 1912 to 1925. The leading writers of this renaissance – Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Edgar Lee Masters, and Carl Sandburg – realistically depicted the contemporary urban environment, decrying the loss of traditional rural values in the increasingly industrialized and materialistic American society and the failure of the romantic promise that hard work would automatically bring material and spiritual rewards. Most of these writers were originally from small Middle Western towns and were deeply affected by the Regionalism of the 1890s that foreshadowed the Realism of 20th century literature.

The Chicago Literary Renaissance

Small Town Literature

• When Sherwood Anderson wrote Winesburg, Ohio, he became part of the American literary tradition by writing about one of its most significant themes: life in a small town.

• One of Anderson's major influences in writing Winesburg, Ohio was Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.

• Masters' work was considered shocking upon its release in 1915, but is now considered his greatest collection of poetry.

• Each poem in the collection is written in the form of an epitaph for one of

• the many characters buried in a small town cemetery. The epitaphs reveal things about the characters that they would have chosen to conceal during life.

• Although the characters and the town of Spoon River are fictional, they are based upon real people Masters knew as a boy in his own Illinois hometown

• Like Masters, Sherwood Anderson wrote about the repressed feelings and desires of small town residents and based his characters on people he really knew. As a result, his work caused scandal and outrage amongthe people of Clyde, Ohio, the real-life basis for Winesburg.

This collection of short stories allows us to enter the alternately complex, lonely, joyful, and strange lives of the inhabitants of the small town of Winesburg, Ohio.

Winesburg, Ohio

Map of Winesburg, Ohio

Winesburg, Ohio is a collection of 24 short stories. The format is similar to a novel but is still arranged in a series of short stories. The first short story, “The Book of the Grotesque,” sets the structure and the framework for the rest of the book. It presents the idea that the world is full of hundreds and hundreds of truths and that all of these truths are beautiful. As people come along, they take one or two of the truths and try to live by them. These beautiful truths become distorted and eventually become falsehoods. The people who pursue the truths but fail become “grotesque”.

Each short story depicts the life of one of the members of the community and the truth that they try to live by and pursue in their lives.

The main character in the piece is George Willard. Although, George Willard appears in only fifteen of the twenty four short stories, the reader sees the development of this character throughout the piece. At the beginning, he is an immature youth, but, in the end, he is man who leaves the town to pursue his own dreams. George Willard is a newspaper reporter in the small town of Winesburg and all the townspeople seem to confide in him. The members of the community hope that this young man will be able to record their lives, so they won’t be forgotten.

Winesburg, Ohio as Bildungsroman

• Anderson's episodic bildungsroman has been compared often to Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology.

• Bildungsroman: (German, from Bildung education + Roman novel.) A novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education.

Major Themes in Winesburg, Ohio

1. Life in Death2. The Pastoral3. Failure of Absolute

Truth4. Winesburg as

Microcosm of the Universe

Life in DeathMost 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.

The Pastoral The narrator often employs a theme of mock sentimentality toward the old, colloquial farmland that Winesburg represents as small town. More largely, it provides a background for examining the break down of the archetypal patterns of human existence: sacrifice, initiation, and rebirth.

Failure of absolute truthAnderson 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. Each of his figures grasped at least one truth as absolute 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.

Winesburg as a Microcosm of the Universal

The figures of Winesburg were forced to handle issues and events which people universally experienced. Anderson’s characters, like most people, are trying to understand their connection to others and the world as a whole. Winesburg then becomes Any Town, USA and the characters symbolize flaws and struggles in the universal human experience. Winesburg functions symbolically as the typical human community.

"The book is, of course, in no sense a burlesque, but it is an effort to treat the lives of simply ordinary people in an American middle western town with sympathy and understanding... These people are all like Wing Biddlebaum, people who had not succeeded in life, but decent people nevertheless."

Sherwood Anderson, 1932

Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio

“Referring to the people of the book – thepeople of my own Winesburg – they arepeople that I personally would be glad tospend my life with. Certainly, I did notwrite to make fun of these people or tomake them ridiculous or ugly, but insteadto show by their example what happens tosimple, ordinary people – particularly theunsuccessful ones – what life does to ushere in America in our times – and on thewhole how decent and real wenevertheless are.”

- Sherwood Anderson on hisWinesburg, Ohio characters

Anderson’s Connection to His Characters

Irving Howe’s Introduction to Winesburg, Ohio

Narrow, intense, almost claustrophobic, [the book] is about extreme states of being, the collapse of men and women who have lost their psychic bearings and now hover, at best tolerated, at the edge of the little community in which they live. It would be a gross mistake if we were to take Winesburg, Ohio as a social photograph of “the typical small town.” Anderson evokes a depressed landscape in which lost souls wander about; they make their flitting appearances mostly in the darkness of night, these stumps and shades of humanity. Figures like Kate Swift are not, nor are they meant to be, “fullyrounded” characters such as we can expect in realistic fiction; they are the shards of life, glimpsed for a moment, the debris of suffering and defeat. In each story one of them emerges, shyly or with a false assertiveness, trying to reach out to companionship and love, driven almost mad by the search for human connection. In the economy of Winesburg these grotesques matter less in their own right than as agents or symptoms of that “indefinable hunger” for meaning which is Anderson’s preoccupation.

Misunderstanding, loneliness, the inability to articulate, are all seen by Anderson as virtually a root condition, something deeply set in our natures. Nor are these people, the grotesques, simply to be pitied and dismissed; at some point in their lives they have known desire, have dreamt of ambition, have hoped for friendship. In all of them there was once something sweet, “like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg.” Now, broken and adrift, they clutch at some rigid notion or idea, a “truth” which turns out to bear the stamp of monomania, leaving them helplessly sputtering, desperate to speak out but unable to. Winesburg, Ohio registers the losses inescapable to life, and it does so with a deep fraternal sadness, a sympathy casting a mild glow over the entire book.

Irving Howe Continued

Grotesque:

adjective - departing markedly from the natural,the expected, or the typical

noun - a style of decorative art that maydistort the natural into absurdity, ugliness,or caricature

A. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

It was the truths that made the people grotesques… themoment one of the people took one of the truths tohimself, called it his truth, and tried to live his lifeby it, he became a grotesque and the truth he

embracedbecame a falsehood.- Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio

Anderson’s Grotesque Characters

The town of Winesburg, Ohio is in reality only a fictitious place. However, it bears acute resemblance to Clyde, the childhood home of Sherwood Anderson. Anderson grew up in Clyde and characterized the townspeople. This new realism in writing influenced many other writers like Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck.

This book, however, shocked the residents of Clyde. Anderson was scorned by many older critics, though praised by many younger ones.

The town of Clyde has certainly achieved fame through this book. People visit the place made famous by the book. Yet the people apparently never forgave him recognizing themselves in it even though the names were changed!

The Real Life Winesburg: Clyde, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson’s Boyhood Home: Clyde, Ohio

Clyde, Ohio: Boyhood Home of Sherwood Anderson

Heritage Hall: Clyde, Ohio

Historical Museum: Clyde, Ohio

Community Park: Clyde, Ohio“Waterworks Hill” in Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson(1876-1941)

"The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint his dreams of his manhood."

(from Winesburg, Ohio)