Truth and the Urban World In Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Andersons Winesburg Ohio exhibits a pattern in which withdrawal and return from the urban world into a green or natural world occurs. While withdrawn into nature characters commonly undergo a period of contemplation, followed by a return to the city. Repeatedly the characters of Winesburg, Ohio play out this scenario of withdrawal and return. This forges a convention that Anderson uses in conjunction with the narration to address the discontent of the individual in the modern world. Anderson succeeds by allowing his characters understanding of the world while in nature. Thus characters then misconstrue the understanding that they gained in nature when they return to the urban world. Throughout the collection of stories Andersons narrator makes subtle reference to a disdain for modern trappings. In the opening paragraph of Hands this narrator shows us, the public highway along which went a wagon filled with berry pickers returning from the fields. The berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed and shouted boisterously (27). In this image we see the modern highway transversed by a wagon, which acts as a symbol of an older, fading world. The young people in this wagon appear happy and jovial after a day of picking berries. This conjures an image that suggests the simple joy of man in nature. In Paper Pills an image of apples that have been put in barrels and shipped to the cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people (36), evokes a sense of compartmentalization and claustrophobia associated with city life. The apples get packed into barrels that seem not unlike the apartments filled with numerous objects and individuals. In the first section of Godliness Andersons narrator abandons his subtlety, and addresses the issue of urban life directly. In the last fifty years a vast change has taken p...
