The Growth Of George Willard In Winesburg, Ohio From Narrative Perspective

Although American writer Sherwood Anderson is famous for his short stories, such as "The Triumph of the Egg","Death in the Woods" and so on, his masterpiece Winesburg, Ohio still remains the classic in American literature. For a long time, the scholars at home and aboard concentrate on the grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio, a group of people who can not adjust to the dramatic social change from agriculture to industry, and get distorted at the end. Scholars analyze the study of those grotesques to reveal the problems brought by the social change through the expressionism and feminism. What is more, the simplicity of language and innovation of expression always remain as the hot topic in critical circle.The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze the growth of George Willard, a central character in Winesburg, Ohio. As George lives with grotesques, he does not collapse himself into alienated grotesques. As a listener, he listens to the past stories of the grotesques, gets their advices and learns from their life experiences to enrich himself. Thus George accomplishes his change from boyhood to adulthood. At first, thesis mainly analyzes the change of George Willard from the perspective of shift of focalization. On the one hand, through the omniscient narrator in zero focalization to reveal the painful life of grotesques, and on the other hand, it shifts to the internal focalization to show the inner worlds and advices of grotesques, George fulfills his growth through their help. Then, this thesis reflects the growth of George through the change of narrative distance. From a background character in his childhood, to the listener among grotesques, George finally appears as a main character falling in love with different women. As the narrative distance between he and the narrator gets closer and closer, he experiences a lot and becomes mature. At last, the author of this thesis studies the hidden information and the implied characteristic and attitude of George through the discrepancy between the story time and narrative time. What is more, summary and scene appeared as the most frequently used duration type in Winesburg, Ohio. They reflect the characters’inner world and their comments on George. Thus, the pace of George’ growth is revealed.