Grotesques" In American Transitional Time--On Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) is one of the pioneers in modern American literature. William Faulkner stated that Anderson was " the father of my generation of American writers and the tradition of American writing which our successors will carry on." Anderson's masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio is hailed as both "a first-rate psychological document" and "a fable of American estrangement". With his sophisticated writing skills, Anderson depicts a picture of a group of grotesques in a small mid-western town in American's transition from rural to industrial society. With his delicate, incisive social perception, he explores the lonely spirits of the small town people who have dropped out of their time. Their souls are twisted by the sharp conflict between their obsessed old beliefs and the new materialism. Thus, they suffer loneliness, frustration and desperation and become "grotesques" in the eyes of the "normal people" who pursue the materialism. By seeing beneath the surface of lives of the grotesques, Anderson finds that alienation is the major social root of the grotesqueness in the small town people.This thesis is composed of four parts. The Introduction describes a survey of the definition and characteristics of the "grotesques", the theoretical basis and the critical modes of the thesis.Chapter One gives a general view of the book's social background and Anderson's life experience. The focus on Anderson's breakdown, which is the resulted from the sharp conflict between his devotion to writing and to business, helps the reader to understand the "grotesques" and Anderson's writing purpose.Chapter Two, the major part of the thesis, is made up of five sections. The first four sections give detailed discussion on four different types of grotesques, with emphasis on their grotesqueness and the psychological and social reasons. The last section describes the common characteristics of all the grotesques.Chapter Three discusses alienation as the major social root of the grotesqueness, and Winesburg, Ohio as a microcosm of the American small town life.Chapter Four deals with the writer's techniques and artistic achievements in terms of such writing skills as simplicity, biblical language and symbolic images.The ending draws a conclusion of the whole thesis and reveals Anderson's writing motivation.