Winesburg, Ohio

“The story of Wing Biddlebaum’s hands is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a job for a poet. In Winesburg the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity. With them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also they made more grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality.”

Anderson describes Wing Biddlebaum as grotesque, evoking his own definition of the word (established in his opening story, “The Book of Grotesque”), referring to the distinguishing traits that set an individual character apart from their community. In doing so, he highlights the concept of Individuality in a Small Town as a major theme in this passage.

“For several weeks the tall dark girl and the doctor were together almost every day. The condition that had brought her to him passed in an illness, but she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the city apartments.”

Anderson ends Paper Pills by returning to the extended metaphor of the twisted apple, which not only applies to Doctor Reefy, but to virtually all the subject characters across the book. In this passage, Anderson explains that once people appreciate the loveable traits of grotesque characters, they gain a more nuanced concept of love that makes them unable to love others in common ways again.

“In the boyish figure she yearned to see something half forgotten that had once been a part of herself recreated. The prayer concerned that. ‘Even though I die, I will in some way keep defeat from you,’ she cried, and so deep was her determination that her whole body shook. Her eyes glowed and she clenched her fists. ‘If I am dead and see him becoming a meaningless drab figure like myself, I will come back,’ she declared. ‘I ask God now to give me that privilege. I demand it. I will pay for it. God may beat me with his fists. I will take any blow that may befall if but this my boy be allowed to express something for us both.’ Pausing uncertainly, the woman stared about the boy’s room. ‘And do not let him become smart and successful either,’ she added vaguely.”

As Elizabeth bares her aspirations for George in a secret prayer to God, Anderson links these aspirations to Elizabeth’s regrets with her own life, revealing her conflicted understanding of happiness and fulfillment. Through the dissonance of Elizabeth’s request, asking God to spare George from failure, but also from intelligence and success as well, Anderson suggests that because Elizabeth cannot define what she wants for herself, she struggles to define what she wants for her son.

“‘I want to fill you with hatred and contempt so that you will be a superior being,’ he declared. ‘Look at my brother. There was a fellow, eh? He despised everyone, you see. You have no idea with what contempt he looked upon mother and me. And was he not our superior? You know he was. You have not seen him and yet I have made you feel that. I have given you a sense of it.’”

Anderson’s story indicates that Doctor Parcival defines himself in opposition to his brother, whose primary character trait was contempt. From this perspective, Parcival’s training to become a minister—a profession defined by love, care, and altruism—is motivated by a desire to differentiate himself from his brother rather than a spiritual calling.

“‘I’m not very bold,’ he thought. Just to touch the folds of the soiled gingham dress would, he decided, be an exquisite pleasure. She began to quibble. ‘You think you’re better than I am. Don’t tell me, I guess I know,’ she said drawing closer to him.

A flood of words burst from George Willard. He remembered the look that had lurked in the girl’s eyes when they had met on the streets and thought of the note she had written. Doubt left him. The whispered tales concerning her that had gone about town gave him confidence. He became wholly the male, bold and aggressive. In his heart there was no sympathy for her.”

In this passage, Anderson calls attention to George’s naivete by expounding on his reaction to Louise Trunnion’s assessment of him. Rather than engage with Louise’s opinions, George contorts them to embolden himself, suggesting that George is more interested in a sexual encounter with Louise than he is in a genuine, emotional connection.

“He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod. Although in his absorption in himself and in his own destiny he was blind to the fact that his young wife was doing a strong woman’s work even after she had become large with child and that she was killing herself in his service, he did not intend to be unkind to her.”

Anderson defines Jesse Bentley by his belief in divine destiny, which forces him to see himself as the protagonist of his own life. Anderson uses this trait to inform Jesse’s dynamic with other characters. Because his personal success is the key concern of his narrative, he becomes oblivious to the needs and struggles of those around him, including his pregnant wife.

“With a cry of fear, David turned and shaking himself loose from the hands that held him, ran away through the forest. He did not believe that the man who turned up his face and in a harsh voice shouted at the sky, was his grandfather at all. The man did not look like his grandfather. The conviction that something strange and terrible had happened, that by some miracle a new and dangerous person had come into the body of the kindly old man took possession of him.”

In the second part of “Godliness,” Anderson evokes David’s point of view to center two parallel transformations—Louise’s transformation into a tender mother and Jesse’s transformation into a terrifying zealot. Anderson undergirds David’s more youthful and innocent perspective with the previously established understanding of Jesse’s devotion to the concept of a divine plan. As a result, Anderson frames this moment not a real transformation, but as the first external manifestation of Jesse’s Inner World. Similarly, Anderson juxtaposes the years of coldness and disdain Jesse has received from Louise with this single moment of genuine tenderness, which he never experiences again.

“It seemed to her that between herself and all the other people in the world, a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others. She became obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a courageous act on her part to make all of her association with people something quite different, and that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes into a room.”

Anderson characterizes Louise by her desire to penetrate a social circle in which she believes she can find the joy she never experienced in her childhood with Jesse, underscoring the book’s thematic interest in The Loneliness of One’s Inner World. Anderson draws a parallel between Louise and young Elizabeth Willard, whom he depicts as sharing a similar naivete, loneliness, and lack of fulfillment in their lives.

“Whenever David’s name was mentioned he looked vaguely at the sky and said that a messenger from God had taken the boy. ‘It happened because I was too greedy for glory,’ he declared, and would have no more to say in the matter.”

The story of the Bentley family ends with Jesse framing David’s flight from Winesburg as part of his divine destiny, reifying his established worldview. Anderson deploys various allusions to Biblical stories to reinforce Jesse’s zealous mindset. Jesse embraces the idea that David was taken by God in an act of punishment against Jesse, because acknowledging David’s agency in his choice to leave would negate the carefully constructed belief system that defines Jesse’s life.

“In and out of the stores of Winesburg went Joe Welling—silent, excessively polite, intent upon his business. Men watched him with eyes in which lurked amusement tempered by alarm. They were waiting for him to break forth, preparing to flee. Although the seizures that came upon him were harmless enough, they could not be laughed away. They were overwhelming. Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality became gigantic. It overrode the man to whom he talked, swept him away, swept all away, all who stood within sound of his voice.”

Anderson begins this story by presenting Joe’s talkative quality as his central character flaw, using exaggeration to make Joe’s rhetoric seem terrifying, as though it were uncontrollable and overwhelming. This device serves to amplify the impact of the plot twist when what seems alarming at first becomes charming by the story’s end.

“Fear of age and ineffectuality took possession of her. She could not sit still, and arose. As she stood looking out over the land something, perhaps the thought of never ceasing life as it expresses itself in the flow of the seasons, fixed her mind on the passing years. With a shiver of dread, she realized that for her the beauty and freshness of youth had passed. For the first time she felt that she had been cheated. She did not blame Ned Currie and did not know what to blame. Sadness swept over her.”

In this passage, Anderson imbues Alice’s realization that she has wasted her youth on her devotion to Ned with an element of irony—such an epiphany about wasting her youth would have impossible in when she was young—aligning youth with naivete and age with experience. The end of Alice’s youth also brings about the end of her naivete, emphasizing The Tension Between Youth and Experience as a running theme in Anderson’s collection.

“Their house was stylish. They were what is called respectable people. There were plush chairs and a couch in the room. I was trembling all over. I hated the men I thought had wronged her. I was sick of living alone and wanted her back. The longer I waited the more raw and tender I became. I thought that if she came in and just touched me with her hand I would perhaps faint away. I ached to forgive and forget.”

Anderson prefaces the climax of “Respectability” with Wash Williams’s description of the parlor that belongs to his wife’s family to link the idea of “respectability” to wealth and luxury—both of which motivate Wash’s desire to reconcile with his wife. Anderson eventually undermines this philosophical build-up through the actions of Wash’s mother-in-law, exposing the illusion of their family’s respectability.

“‘If George Willard were here, he’d have something to say,’ thought Seth. ‘George belongs to this town. He’d shout at Turk and Turk would shout at him. They’d both be secretly pleased by what they had said. It’s different with me. I don’t belong. I’ll not make a fuss about it, but I’m going to get out of here.’”

Seth Richmond defines himself in opposition to George Willard, positioning them as foils to one another. In this passage, Seth identifies George as someone who gets along with everyone, including people like Turk Smollet. Seth frames his own inability to engage with the people around him as proof that he does not belong in Winesburg rather than as something to improve upon in his behavior.

“They think it’s easy to be a woman, to be loved, but I know better […] I know about her struggles and her defeats. It is because of her defeats that she is to me the lovely one. Out of her defeats has been born a new quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call it Tandy. I made up the name when I was a true dreamer and before my body became vile. It is the quality of being strong to be loved. It is something men need from women and that they do not get.”

In this passage, the stranger speaks to the difficulties that women face to shore up his own view of the world and himself, framing the suffering of women as a means of making them more appealing to men. He fixates on Tom Hard’s young daughter, treating the five-year-old child as a vessel for his drunken examination of his own pain and loneliness. Anderson later depicts the young girl adopting the name the stranger ascribes to strong women, signaling the impact of the stranger’s speech on her without meaningfully interrogating it.

“He was horror stricken at the thought of a woman smoking and trembled also to think that his eyes, just raised from the pages of the book of God, had looked upon the bare shoulders and white throat of a woman. With his brain in a whirl he went down into the pulpit and preached a long sermon without once thinking of his gestures or his voice. The sermon attracted unusual attention because of its power and clearness. ‘I wonder if she is listening, if my voice is carrying a message into her soul,’ he thought and began to hope that on future Sunday mornings he might be able to say words that would touch and awaken the woman apparently far gone in secret sin.”

Reverend Hartman excuses the attraction he feels to Kate Swift’s naked form, by framing her actions as sinful, highlighting the misogyny inherent in a patriarchal perspective on women and sexuality that positions women as temptresses rather victims of a male gaze. Spying on Kate threatens the minister’s conservative ideals and view of himself as beyond moral reproach—a threat he mitigates by claiming to channel his temptation into greater eloquence and passion in his sermons.

“‘You will have to know life,’ she declared, and her voice trembled with earnestness. She took hold of George Willard’s shoulders and turned him about so that she could look into his eyes. A passerby might have thought them about to embrace. ‘If you are to become a writer you’ll have to stop fooling with words,’ she explained. ‘It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it’s time to be living. I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. 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.’”

Kate’s advice to George echoes the narrator’s advice to the reader in Anderson’s opening story, “The Book of the Grotesque.” Rather than preoccupy himself with the eloquence of his writing on the page, Kate encourages George to invest himself in learning the intimate thoughts of others, which she believes he can only do by living and engaging with the world around him. Kate’s perspective nuances Anderson’s thematic exploration of The Loneliness of One’s Inner World, by suggesting that genuine attention and engagement is the key to both meaningful connection and consequential writing.

“‘You don’t get the point,’ he wanted to explain: ‘the picture you see doesn’t consist of the things you see and say words about. There is something else, something you don’t see at all, something you aren’t intended to see.’”

In this passage, Anderson reveals to the reader the larger ideas that Enoch Robinson engages in his work. Much like Kate and the narrator of “The Book of the Grotesque,” Enoch is not concerned with the technical proficiency of his work, but with the deeper truth it reveals by engaging with inner worlds and intimate thoughts.

“George went into a vacant lot and throwing back his head looked up at the sky. He felt unutterably big and remade by the simple experience through which he had been passing and in a kind of fervor of emotion put up his hands, thrusting them into the darkness above his head and muttering words. The desire to say words overcame him and he said words without meaning, rolling them over on his tongue and saying them because they were brave words, full of meaning. ‘Death,’ he muttered, ‘night, the sea, fear, loveliness.’”

In this passage, Anderson highlights George’s attempt to take Kate’s advice to heart, uttering words to elicit their poetic meaning—imbuing his spoken and written words with the beauty and meaning of his lived experiences. The fact that George’s mind must dance over several unrelated words in search of the right one exposes the limitation of language to match the beauty of the moment, suggesting that life is bigger than George in ways that he can’t capture as a writer.

“When we lived out here it was different. I worked and at night I went to bed and slept. I wasn’t always seeing people and thinking as I am now. In the evening, there in town, I go to the post office or to the depot to see the train come in, and no one says anything to me. Everyone stands around and laughs and they talk but they say nothing to me. Then I feel so queer that I can’t talk either. I go away. I don’t say anything. I can’t.”

Anderson links Elmer Cowley’s inability to express his true feelings to George with his sense that he doesn’t belong in the Winesburg community. Elmer draws a contrast between his life in town and his earlier life on the farm to explain his feelings of isolation and disconnect.

“The beauty of the country about Winesburg was too much for Ray on that fall evening. That is all there was to it. He could not stand it. Of a sudden he forgot all about being a quiet old farm hand and throwing off the torn overcoat began to run across the field. As he ran he shouted a protest against his life, against all life, against everything that makes life ugly.”

In this passage, Anderson reuses a visual trigger from “Adventure” in which Alice Hindman confronts her faded youth at the sight of the land before her. Similarly, Ray feels compelled to rebel against the stagnation of his life when he looks upon the lush countryside.

“The boy was ashamed, but he was rather glad, too. ‘It is all right to be ashamed and makes me understand new things,’ he said to the grandmother, who didn’t know what the boy was talking about but loved him so much that it didn’t matter whether she understood or not.”

Anderson defines Tom Foster’s primary character trait as his curiosity, describing him as appreciative even of shameful experiences that allow him to learn something new. Anderson suggests that even as a boy, Tom justifies morally ambiguous actions by citing the lessons they teach regardless of the negative impact of those actions on others, foreshadowing the stories he fabricates related to his crush, Helen White, later in the story.

“‘You dear! You lovely dear! Oh you lovely dear!’ he muttered and thought he held in his arms, not the tired out woman of forty-one but a lovely and innocent girl who had been able by some miracle to project herself out of the husk of the body of the tired-out woman.”

Anderson refers back to a detail from Elizabeth’s youth, allowing Doctor Reefy to echo one of her early lovers through the moniker “lovely dear.” The narrator suggests that the words have a powerful effect on Elizabeth, momentarily transforming her, reviving the young Elizabeth from many years before. Anderson repeats the phrase throughout the collection, providing thematic resonance, such as when George repeats the words after his mother has died.

“There is no way of knowing what woman’s thoughts went through her mind but, when the bottom of the hill was reached and she came up to the boy, she took his arm and walked beside him in dignified silence. For some reason they could not have explained they had both got from their silent evening together the thing needed. Man or boy, woman or girl, they had for a moment taken hold of the thing that makes the mature life of men and women in the modern world possible.”

George and Helen reckon with their maturity after engaging in one last attempt to preserve their youth. Their actions evoke Alice Hindman’s attempt to restore her youth by running in the rain in “Adventure” and Ray Pearson’s run across the field in “The Untold Lie,” emphasizing The Tension Between Youth and Experience as a common human experience. However, while Alice grappled with the isolation of age, George and Helen feel content with the knowledge that they have reached the end of youth in each other’s company.