The Lonely Lives In Sherwood Anderson's Short Stories

Sherwood Anderson is a special literary figure in American literature. His works, especially his short stories, have attracted generations of readers. Many literary giants such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck owed a lot to him. There have been many critical essays about his stories: his style, his language and his theme. The fluctuations in critical attitudes toward Anderson make it very difficult to give him an evaluation that everybody would accept. His book of grotesques Winesburg, Ohio has been studied from many perspectives. Anyway, the purpose of this dissertation is not to evaluate his works or himself, but an effort to interpret Anderson from the perspective of the lonely people he has portrayed in his short stories. Two collections of short stories, namely Winesburg, Ohio and The Triumph of The Egg, are selected to be studied together for this purpose.As what concerned Anderson is the inner life of his characters in the small American western towns, their loneliness manifested through their efforts to communicate became particularly important. The grotesques, or emotionally crippled souls, are analyzed through their appearance, their inability to communicate, their hands, eyes and their violent motions. In their grope in the dark, their desperate cries for freedom, understanding and love ring loud. Correctly understood in their particular cultural framework, the seemingly inaccessible grotesques under Anderson's pen are no longer people who should be despised, but those who need our sympathy and who deserve to be loved and respected. They are just like the sweet ,twisted and gnarled apples growing in the orchards of Winesburg. Although they tend to be neglected and rejected by the fruit-pickers, they are bestowed with sweetness.The loneliness of life turns them into grotesques, and this loneliness mainly results from their isolation, which is decided by the social background of a time when in the 1920s people in America were caught in the dilemma of two ages: alienation by the Machine Age and nostalgia of the Pastoral life they were so familiar with. They felt lost, confused and frustrated and in this neither-nor period. This feeling of loss is...