The Wall Against Understanding And Communication-An Analysis Of Sherwood Anderson's Works

Sherwood Anderson, a modern American writer, was once regarded as a semi-important figure in the American literature history and as"a one-significant-book writer"whose only representative and influential work is Winesburg, Ohio. Therefore, this viewpoint has been the biggest barrier to a fair and comprehensive research on the writer and his works in our country. In fact, during Anderson's prolific years, he displayed the relatively invariable theme in different angles and forms: small town people becoming grotesqueness. Focusing on his other weighty novels and stories makes it possible to interpret the message that the writer endeavored to deliver throughout his lifetime in a more profound and comprehensive way.On one hand, due to his background of a small town boy, he felt a special affection for small towns and small town people. On the other, the youth experience in Chicago exerted immense influence on him during the Chicago Renaissance. So influences from the rural and urban elements led him to pursue in his whole life the psychological transformation of those small town people who inevitably became urbanized and to depict a lamentable picture of grotesque people who suddenly found out their dream were beyond reach in the depressing and changed environment. At the end, the writer opened no definite door for his protagonists: they merely left where they lived, or they wandered for an outlet in the imagined world.The WALL—the core metaphor in all his works, which is the gap in the mutual understanding and love, which is a sharp sword cutting off communion and communication. Taking it as breakthrough, we are going to analyze his selected works and summarize his writing craft and influence on his successors and also broaden the preceding research. Living in America's economical and social transformation age from craftsmanship to mechanization, Sherwood Anderson depicted lower class small town people in urbanization. So, the social psychology and theme in his works can be reference for the contemporary Chinese literary society.