The Innocent Grotesques: Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson is a very peculiar writer in the history of American literature. He was born in 1876, in Camden, Ohio. Anderson's peak period of writing career saw the transition of America from agrarian age to industrialization age. His best book, Winesburg, Ohio, saturated with deep nostalgia toward the golden pastoral agrarian age, is a portrait of the small town life of that period of time.Winesburg,Ohio is an artistic representation of the difficult situations human beings are caused in and a parable of alienation and loss of love of the modern men. In his novel, each individual story is a poetic prose with slow pace and melodic tone. Anderson does not only intend to present us an objective picture of life at that period of time, but also makes a record of an important historic period of America with his fertile imagination and deep love toward his compatriot. With the tone peculiarly of a storyteller, Anderson tells the listener the group of weird and unaccountable tales of the grotesques and plays a melody full of nostalgia and despair. The novel seems loose in structure, but it's a coherent whole. Anderson makes full use of imageries and lyrical words to impress the reader; of simple but meaningful symbols to reveal the dull and gray theme of loss of love; and of the moments of epiphany to expose the inner world of the grotesques and embody the eternity in one moment. It is evident that Sherwood Anderson is a forerunner of modernism who combines various modernistic creative techniques, rather than simply a realist, naturalist or romanticist.Using modernistic narrative techniques, Anderson presents us a group of modern grotesques and the mature process of George Willard, the young reporter for the local newspaper. All the grotesques in the novel try to reach out to George to form intimate relationships with him. They wish not only to find an outlet of emotional release in George, but also to regain the social value and a way of life they cherish so much. In witnessing the sad stories of the grotesques, George finds out the good virtues of thegrotesque beneath their grotesque appearance and behavior, and he himself also finds the true meaning of life. With his own understanding of life and the people around him, George has accomplished his evolution from ignorant adolescent to mature manhood and finally, with the influences the grotesques have imparted on him and his own concept of life, leaves Winesburg and begins a new life. The Winesburg town becomes the background for him to realize the dreams of his manhood. In the novel, George Willard is the central figure who gains his maturity as a modern man while interacting with the grotesques. In this sense, Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio is a well-designed novel created with modernistic narrative techniques, which are against the traditional artifice.This thesis consists of five parts. Introduction is about Anderson's life and his artistic views on fiction. Chapter One tries to use Freudian psychoanalysis, especially Freud's iceberg theory about human psyche and his theory on the ego defense mechanism to analyze the grotesques in the novel. The grotesques are weird in one-way or another, but they have something in common: there is pure and persistent longing for understanding and love in their hearts. They are blocked from the release of the basic human emotions. Their living conditions have been changed, the fertile land they rely on for their livelihood is undertaking great changes, and their beautiful pastoral agrarian community is coming to an end, but they resist changes in themselves, sticking to the out-of-dated truth. They live in the past, unwilling to face the present life and adjust themselves to the new environment. Their lives are unfulfilled, and their desires repressed, thus they become grotesques. Chapter Two mainly focuses on the interactions between George Willard and the grotesques, through which, George Willard has undergone a voyage from innocence to experience, from ignorance to understanding, and from apparent reality to true reality. Chapter Three mainly analyzes the modernistic narrative techniques used by Anderson in this novel: style of looseness and imageries, the moment of epiphany and symbolic significance. Conclusion is the summary of Anderson's achievement in Winesburg, Ohio, his influence on the young writers at his time and his position in the history of American literature.With his exquisite insight of American society, Anderson has depicted a group of grotesques living in the transitional period from agrarian tradition to modernization, and provided us with a picture of spiritual wasteland of the modern people. Anderson's unique place in the history of American literature is thus unshakably strengthened. He is one of the pioneers of American modernist literature. Although compared with the mainstream modernist writers such as Faulkner, Joyce and Woolf, he lacks their sense of crisis and anxiety in the modern world. Nevertheless, both his achievements and limitation deserve our further study today.