"Silence Speaks Better Than Words": The Verbal Failure And Intuitive Triumph In Winesburg, Ohio

As one of the pioneers in modern American literature, Sherwood Anderson was very concerned about people's living state in modern society. Winesburg, Ohio is one of those masterpieces in which Anderson has explored people's loneliness and alienation. The book is hailed as both a first-rate psychological document and a fable of American estrangement. With his sophisticated writing skills, Anderson has depicted a group of lonely grotesques in a small Midwest town, who hunger for mutual understanding and communication but end up in alienation.The thesis is focused on the root for people's difficulty in understanding and communication as reflected in Winesburg. It aims to demonstrate that upon the issue of human alienation Sherwood Anderson has suggested that language is instable and inadequate for human communication and that people should resort to the intuitive perception so as to acquire better understanding.The thesis consists of the following three chapters:The first chapter provides some background information for the thesis. It first tries to make a connection between Anderson's life experience and his distrust of language, and then moves on to give an instruction upon Anderson's emphasis on intuitive perception.The second chapter discusses the verbal failure which Anderson has highlighted in Winesburg. This chapter first concentrates on the narrative voice, which continually draws the reader's attention to the limitation of narration and then focuses on the inarticulate characters that Anderson has created. From these two aspects we will then find out how Anderson has rendered language unreliable both for the narrator to convey the stories and for the characters to communicate with each other.The third chapter is about the significance of the nonverbal, intuitive perception as reflected in Winesburg. The chapter looks into examples in which the intuitive perception has established some moments of understanding between the inarticulate characters. Moreover, it also analyzes the growth of the protagonist George Willard, whose development is marked by his growing awareness of the limitation of language and his awakening to the intuitive perception. The ending draws a conclusion of the whole thesis and reveals the significance of the theme discussed above.