Lostness Of Self, Love And Communication

Sherwood Anderson is one of the major figures in modern American literary history. His work as a whole truly embodies the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth century literature. His tone, even within one individual work, is often varied. He could be melodramatic in one paragraph and subtle in the next; crude in the middle and sophisticated at the end; smugly moralizing for a while and then powerfully documentary for another. His theme and style strongly influenced the work of such diverse writers as Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, John Steinbeck and many others.Winesburg Ohio is Anderson's most celebrated work. And it is often considered as a pioneering book of American modern literature. The themes of this book touch the universal concerns of the plight of the individuals in a modern society, such as isolation, frustration, alienation, loneliness and the loss of faith. This thesis aims to apply a modernist perspective with special reference to the expressions of isolation, frustration and loneliness to the study of Winesburg Ohio in order to open up a new' understanding of the characteristics and causes of these grotesque characters in this work.The introduction gives some background information about Sherwood Anderson and a movement called Chicago Renaissance, which gives a hint of setting of the book and the influences on Anderson's creation, an important factor in understanding the themes of the book.Chapter one tries to give a detailed description of the life of the inhabitants in a small town Winesburg Ohio. People living in this small town suffer from some psychic deformity, or so called grotesqueness in the book. They stay in the shadow of a walled life, and act like living in the separate cages, seeing the bodies and hearing the voices but never being able to make connection with others.Chapter two attempts to analyze what causes these townspeople's abnormal behaviors and their psychic deformity. With the gradual loss of tradition and the rapid invasion of machinery, the inhabitants of Winesburg Ohio are confused and bewildered by the paradoxical situation they have to confront. Industrialization is a calamity to the psyche of the small town people. It thwarts their dreams, truncates their emotions, blasts their confidence, impoverishes their dignity and twists their personality, all of which repress their abilities to communicate and love and make them dangling somewhere between two lives and ages.Chapter three discusses the efforts the townspeople made to escape the suffocating atmosphere in Winesburg Ohio, struggling to express themselves in hopes of reaching understanding and connection. However, the desire to act is present in their mind, but the ability and willingness to act is inhibited. So, the grotesques find no way out. Even though the grotesques physically leave the tangible town, they cannot escape from the feeling of loneliness and frustration.Chapter four is about the growth and escape of George Willard, a central character who threads into the life of all characters in the book. As a result of experience, of being exposed to different forms of speeches and voices that surround him, George undergoes a developmental change, from boyhood to manhood, and, eventually he escapes from Winesburg Ohio.Finally the author comes to the conclusion that Winesburg is not just a place; it is also human condition in any transitional period.