Alienation And Loneliness In Allegory

Sherwood Anderson is known as the “advisor of the giants” in the history of modern American literature in the 20 th century.Winesburg,Ohio was published in 1919 and is the most representative work of Anderson.This book is composed of 25 independent and interrelated stories,depicting a group of lonely characters who are distorted by the brutal reality of the American social transformation in the early 20 th century.From the perspective of trauma theory,this thesis analyzes the traumas of different characters in Winesburg,Ohio and explores the essential reasons for the alienation and loneliness of the grotesques.Applying trauma theory,this thesis classifies the characters' traumas from three perspectives: society,family and individual.This thesis analyzes the traumas of Elizabeth Willard and another eight characters in the book about the symptoms,the causes and the recovery of their traumas.They mainly suffer from three categories of trauma: industrial trauma,family trauma,and individual trauma.The cause of the industrial trauma is the rapid replacement of the agricultural and handicraft markets by the machines in the second industrial revolution.People living on farming and handicraft struggle hard but fail to adapt to the fast-paced lifestyles in the industrial society thus have symptoms of marginalization,communication barrier and even hysteria.The cause of family trauma is the lack of care and love from their family members,which cause their communication barrier,hysteria and repetition compulsion.The individual traumas are mainly from their traumas of love and of being misunderstood,which cause their repression and disassociation.Only a few of the characters have recovered from their traumas at last.This book is an allegory.Many of the characters in the book are the people in Ohio that Anderson knows.Anderson sets his stories in a fabled town called Winesburg.In Winesburg,Ohio,the storyteller and participant—George Willard is Anderson in the real life.Anderson's small town is not just in Ohio but an epitome of the whole America in the mid-19 th century.Studying the traumas in this book will bring the readers a better understanding of Anderson himself and also help in understanding and doing researches on his other works.Moreover,the alienated and lonely grotesques also exist in our lives,and this thesis hope to give more care to such groups.