Epiphany In Sherwood Anderson’s Initiation Stories

Sherwood Anderson, whose reputation primarily rests upon his well-known novel Winesburg, Ohio, was proclaimed by William Faulkner as "the father of my whole generation of writers." As a conspicuous writing technique which he employs in story writing, epiphany in his masterpiece is intended to reveal the living dilemma confronted by the inarticulate "Grotesques" who are repressed in American industrialized society. This particular technique, however, frequently recurs and is on the way of perfection in three collections of short stories, namely The Triumph of Eggs, Horses and Men and Death in the Woods, which were published after the great hit of Winesburg, Ohio. What sets them apart is that they focus on the initiation of teenagers symbolized by a variety of epiphanies. In terms of few scholarship ever conducted on the initiation theme and epiphany implied in these three collections and the fact that in a strict sense Winesburg, Ohio is far from being a collection of short stories, this present thesis is intended to probe into various epiphanies which the teenagers experience by interpreting representative initiation stories selected from the three collections. Meanwhile, the features and functions of epiphanies are summed up in order to embody the causes leading to those teen grotesques’alienation from the society, the spiritual inspiration which epiphanies create in their initiation, as well as the positive meanings and humanistic concerns implied in the stories selected. Setting from the introduction which mainly presents Anderson’s achievements and the framework of the thesis, the succeeding chapters are respectively devoted to the American initiation story and the characteristics of Anderson’s initiation stories; various epiphanies in his works; two typical features of epiphanies, namely unforeseeablity and contradictoriness, as well as their functions in plot development, characterization of the grotesque image and thematic enhancement. Then, a natural conclusion is drawn that the foregrounded art of epiphany plays a tremendous role in Anderson’s initiation stories.