put upon themselves. The town has no real power of repression over the people who reside there. The people within the town defeat themselves, at some point in their life, and then they retreat from the option to leave. I spoke of coffins earlier __ Winesburg is like a great big coffin for people who have given up on their hopes and dreams. But this is not by the design of the town, this occurs in effect from the people in it. They build the coffin up around them, and then turn what’s left of their insides into a grotesque distortion, the leftovers. For many of the characters, the original hope or dream was out of proportion in the first place. ...
