The Ending of Winesburg

Winesburg Ohio was one of those books in English that I really believed wouldn't be able to hold my attention. There were a couple stories that I highlighted in my previous blog posts that stood out to me as being interesting and intriguing but other than that I didn't feel much of a connection to the characters or the strife they were faced with during daily life in the small Ohio town. One of the major reasons why I failed to connect with the characters was that many of the themes and motifs that drove the members of the town to become grotesque beings were characteristics I have never experienced before. Thoughts like complete isolation and utter hatred for others was something alien to me and in some cases I didn't understand what led the characters to develop these feelings.
Two of the major themes that reoccurred the most during the story were the feeling of isolation and alienation. Many of the characters in the stories felt isolated because they lacked connection with the other members of the town. These connections were never formed or were broken for many different reasons, but one theme that stayed constant with why these connections were broken was a form of alienation or exclusion for some reason. This reason could either be a detestable act that happened in the past or it could have stemmed from an overall discomfort that was given off by the character. In the case of characters like Kate the schoolteacher, she felt isolated and alienated because of her physical appearance as well as her seemingly unnatural attraction to George Williard, a boy she used to teach. Anyway you look at it, the characters in Winesburg felt alone, with little to look forward to in their lives doing nothing but waiting for the sweet embrace from their future lover death to swallow them up and end their suffering.

Respectability of Man

In the two weeks it has been since my last post here, our class has continued to make headway with the book we started and that I discussed in my last post, Winesburg Ohio. In the classes since that last post we have examined and vigorously fondled the short stories about the people of the small Ohioan town and the reasons why there lives are nothing but pain, suffering and horribly grotesque truth. Similarly to Wing Biddlebaum in the story Hands, each character featured in the book has their own issue that needs to be worked through, whether it be physical, mental or social. In just about every case, however, the townspeople are unable to come to terms with the issues they wrestle with and instead continue to live their lives ailed by mental and social stigmas that they themselves are unable to solve, or sometimes even understand that they have a problem at all.

One of the stories that I have read since Hands that has stood out to me was the one titled Respectability. Respectability centers around a man named Wash Williams, the telegraph operator for the town of Winesburg. Wash is one of the more ironically named members of the town as he is described as the ugliest, fattest and dirtiest people in Winesburg. It is also well known throughout the town that Wash despises all women, going so far as to describe them as emotionally dead, deceitful creatures. It is not until Wash sits down with George Williard that we understand why he holds this animosity towards woman. When Wash was younger he had a wife that he loved very much, but later found out that she was cheating on him with multiple men while he worked. Disgusted, Wash packed up and left his wife, yet still showed signs that he cared for her by sending her money that he got from selling the house they once lived in. Months later, Wash was invited to his ex-wife's mother's house to try and patch things up. Wash arrived with almost complete intentions of reconciling with her until hes ex was sent into the room completely naked. His mother in law had decided the simplest way to get a man back was simply through sex and thought nothing of manipulating her daughter into doing this. Wash snapped and almost killed his mother in law for the reason that he believed that this act showed that not only was his wife deceitful, but that all woman were deceitful and were not to be trusted or dealt with at all. One of the more interesting parts of this story I thought was in the first paragraph, where Anderson spends time describing a dirty little monkey that lives in a cage in the center of town. Particularly, the comment that described how the women of the town spent time relating the monkey to the various men in their lives. This aspect foreshadows the misogynistic views that Wash would developed after dealing with his wife and mother in laws deception, and  also perhaps reflects how Anderson himself feels towards women in his own life, that they are indeed deceitful or untrustworthy.

The Woes of Winesburg

This week in English class we started reading a new book called Winesburg, Ohio. It was written by a man named Sherwood Anderson, a man who lived anything but an ordinary life. Anderson lived in many small Ohio towns in his lifetime before getting married and starting up his own very successful mail order business which made him pretty wealthy in early 1900's standards. However, due to a couple significant nervous breakdowns, Anderson completely dropped his current job, family and life altogether to go and become a novelist, much to the chagrin of his wife and children. He wrote Winesburg as a reflection of one of the towns in Ohio he had lived in in the past and created characters to fill the town, all of which had certain ugly truths that they wished not to be so but were. These truths were called Grotesques in literary terms and created depth within each person who called Winesburg home.

The first story in the novel is called "Hands", a story told through the eyes of a young reporter and Winesburg native as he talked with and observed a man named Wing Biddlebaum. Wing had an interesting relationship with the towns people as his best known attribute was his hands, which were known for their incredible speed and precision most notably while berry picking. Wing wasn't always his name however, for before he moved to Winesburg he was known as Adolph and was a school teacher in one of the neighboring towns. Wing was wrongly persecuted by the townspeople for touching and fondling the boys he taught and was promptly run out of town. He changed his name and forsook the hands that he had once held close to him. Wing's grotesque is that, as he does not know exactly why he was run out of town, he believes that him caring for and nurturing young minds was shameful and wrong, and lived his current life so as not to offend anyone else by doing it again. I thought this story was interesting because it actually isn't the first time I've read it and I missed a lot of details the first time around that, when put together, make the story much more engaging and thought provoking than before.

When Dreams and Reality Cross Paths

This week, our English class dove into the history of psychology specifically focusing on one individual who's work and study helped make the study of the mind what it is today. That mans name was Sigmund Freud and he was an Austrian born neurologist who had a particular fascination with the brain and its many functions and intricacies.  One particular facet of the brain that fascinated Freud was the subconscious. Freud's research helped to break the mind into three parts, the Id, Ego and Superego, and analyze what each part of the mind is responsible for in how people think and act. One example of this would be that the Id is more responsible for primal instincts, like arousal or anger, while the ego is more responsible for intellectual and cognitive thinking and decision making. Freud studied the mind further, particularly focusing on defense mechanisms which are ways the human mind deals with stress or traumatic events.  Some mechanisms can be as subtle as suppressing any thoughts of the event or conflict and can be as drastic as tearing the subconscious apart and creating split personalities.

Another thing we learned about that I found particularly interesting was dreams and how one can interpret their dreams to understand how they feel on certain aspects of their life. Dreams act as sort of "wish fulfillment" as they portray what or how the person wants to deal with a traumatic event or conflict. These dreams are filled with symbolic meaning and metaphors to help avoid facing problems head on and this is the part of dreams that can be interpreted. I particularly liked when Ms. Baskin interpreted both of Anthony's dreams of focusing around phallic symbols and animosity towards his father.