A Critical Study Of The Theme And Technique Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg,Ohio

Sherwood Anderson is a figure of great importance in the twentieth century American literature. His illuminating theme and original writing technique inspire the generation of writers that follow him,Winesburg, Ohio, his masterpiece, explores systematically the damages by industrialization to inhabitants of Middle Western small towns during the initial period of industrial revolution in American history. Industrialization was not only an economic, a cultural disaster to the middle westerners, but most catastrophic of all, it dehumanized them and reduced them into grotesques who were unable to communicate feelings, thought and love. Consequently, Winesburg, Ohio, a once prosperous rural community, became a tomb-like town populated by thousands of lost souls. In order that the complex theme of the novel can be expressed in an effective way, Anderson employs a special fictional form and a simple but expressive prose. The novel's form is an extreme looseness梐 cycle of stories梬hich allows the author more freedom to delineate the desolate aura in Winesburg and the adverse situation of its inhabitants. Anderson's prose is simple: his vocabulary is derived from his daily life; the syntax he uses is the declarative sentence structure. But beneath the deceptive appearance of simplicity, his prose is a really stylized one. In order to portray the complexities of grotesques' state of mind and the absolute isolation between them, Anderson deliberately uses some devices, such as the repetition of nouns and the frequent appearance of some images.