Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Miscellaneous Truth and the Urban World in Shwerwood Andersons Winesburg Ohio Truth and the Urban World in Shwerwood Andersons Winesburg Ohio Truth and the Urban World In Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson’s 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 While withdrawn into nature characters commonly undergo a period of contemplation, followed by a return to the city.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 Anderson’s 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” Anderson’s narrator abandons his subtlety, and addresses the issue of urban life directly. In the last fifty years a vast change has taken place in the lives of our people. A revolution has in fact taken place. The coming of industrialism, attended by all the roar and rattle of affairs, the shrill cries of millions of new voices that have come among us from overseas, the going and coming of trains, the growth of cities, the building of the interurban car lines that weave in and out of town and past farmhouses, and now in these later days the coming of the automobiles has worked a tremendous change in the lives and in the habits of thought of our people of Mid-America. (70-71) In this declaration the narrator suggests a problem with the changes taking place in the modern world. Words such as revolution, roar, rattle, and shrill posses connotations of violence and discomfort. Other words, such as vast, millions, new, and tremendous lend a sense of chaos and uncontrolled momentum to this violent change. The paragraph goes on to define the effect of modernity on smaller communities. In our day a farmer standing by the stove in the store in his village has his mind filled to overflowing with the words of other men. The newspapers and the magazines have pumped him full. Much of the old brutal ignorance that had in it also a kind of beautiful childlike innocence is gone forever. The farmer by the stove is brother to the men of the cities, and if you listen you will find him talking as glibly and as senselessly as the best city man of us all. (71) The influx of senseless ideas from larger urban areas complicates the simple lives of small community farmers, and destroys the “childlike innocence” of nature. The narrator elaborates on this innocence. “In them was no desire for words printed upon paper. As they worked in the fields, vague, half-formed thoughts took possession of them” (71). The narrator suggests that while the farmers of older times existed in nature, they didn’t need the words of other men to form ideas. Nature, in the form of the field, supplies simple thoughts by which these men could live their lives. Having brought to bear a concern for the lost individuals of older times, Anderson suggests a return to nature. The majority of the story “Godliness” takes place on the Bently Farm, and concerns the relationship of young David Hardy with his grandfather Jesse Bently. While in town, living with his parents, David grew up in Winesburg where, “there was not much joy in his childhood” (75). Sometimes as a child, when his parents fought, he grew frightened. He was frightened and ran away to hide. Sometimes he could not find a hiding place and that confused him. Turning his face toward a tree or if he was indoors toward the wall, he closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything. (76) The narrator loads this small section of text with images that endorse a discontent with modern living and a desire for nature. David’s youth symbolizes innocence, while the fighting and violence of his parents represents the modern world. Frightened, he tries to escape, but can’t, and becomes confused. As a last ditch effort he turns towards a symbol of nature in the form of a tree. If trapped in-doors, he turns to the wall, on the other side of which lies the outside, and nature. In this state he tried not to think of anything, imitating the “brutal ignorance (71)” that the narrator proposes gone forever from the world. In the beginning the Bently Farm represents nature outside the urban world of Winesburg. “On the occasions when David went to visit his grandfather on the Bently farm, he was altogether contented and happy. Often he wished that he would never have to go back to town” (76). However, in time the Bently Farm grows corrupted by an insurgence of the modern world, and comes to represent another urban setting. Jesse Bently allows himself to become a victim of the modernistic trend. He “formed the habit of reading newspapers and magazines” (81), and “the greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be made by tilling the land” (81). By allowing himself to give into the temptations of urban ideas, he transforms the Bently Farm. He [Jesse Bently] began to buy machines that would permit him to do the work of the farms while employing fewer men, and he sometimes thought that if he were a younger man he would give up farming altogether and start a factory in Winesburg for the making of machinery. (81) By replacing the individuals on the farm with machines, and juxtaposing this image with one of a factory that produces machines, the narrator effectively changes the agrarian landscape of the Bently Farm. The narrator, through his choice of text, turns the once pastoral farm into an urban environment. Now, to find truth and understanding, Jesse and David need to remove themselves from the farm, which no longer provides the peace of nature. In the second section of “Godliness,” Anderson relates young David’s trip into the woods. His grandfather brings him into nature, hoping to recapture the simple joy of being one with the land. David, “clapped his hands and danced with delight. He looked at the tall trees and was sorry that he was not a little animal to climb high in the air without being frightened” (p.84). David leaves the urban world of Winesburg and the Bently Farm, and finds in nature the joy he lacked in town. Over the course of his withdrawal into nature, David acquires the truth that celebrates both the animalistic innocence of his own human nature, and the simplicity of the bond between animal and environment. David vocalizes this new truth in a rousing manner, “’Wake up, little animal. Go and climb to the top of the trees,’ he shouted in a shrill voice” (85). While in the grip of this truth David grows frightened of his grandfather. This occurs because Jesse Bently fell victim to modern life. He corrupted the Bently Farm with machines, and began reading newspapers. David, who now possesses the insight granted by nature, comes to see his grandfather as a representation of the confusion and violence of the urban world. “The conviction that something strange and terrible had happened, that by some miracle a new and dangerous person had come into the body of the kindly old man, took possession of him” (86). When his withdrawal into nature ends, and he returns to the urban landscape of the Bently Farm, David takes the truth he acquired to be the only one. “David spent every moment when he did not have to attend school, out in the open. Alone or with other boys he went every afternoon into the woods to gather nuts” (98). The truth that David gained begins to limit his experiences. He pursues his new truth to the exclusion of other activities. The narration suggests that David attempts to emulate the little animals that he came to appreciate during his withdrawal by foraging in the woods for nuts. David’s truth of animal innocence and the simple bond between creature and nature grows more dominating as the story continues. The other boys of the countryside, most of them sons of laborers on the Bently farms, had guns with which they went hunting rabbits and squirrels, but David did not go with them, He made himself a sling with rubber bands and a forked stick and went off by himself to gather nuts. David fashions a very simple tool, forsaking the more efficient machines of the modern world, and sets off alone into nature to gather nuts. Meanwhile, the other boys take their guns into nature to hunt creatures that gather nuts. This portion of text, with its images of primitive tools and animals, shows how far David comes to trust in the truth he discovered during his withdrawal. Ultimately, however, David falls victim to his truth, having given over to it totally. Once again he goes into the woods with his grandfather. Jesse Bently threateningly approaches David, with the intent of sacrificing a lamb he brought and anointing the boy’s head with the blood. Frightened, David reacts to his grandfather with animal-like economy and brutality. “He did not hesitate, but reaching down, selected a stone and put it into the sling. With all his strength he drew back the heavy rubber bands and the stone whistled through the air” (102). His grandfather falls to the ground, apparently dead. David’s reaction to the threat of his grandfather echoes the primal survival instincts of wild creatures. “With a cry he turned and ran off through the woods weeping convulsively. ‘I don’t care--I killed him, but I don’t care,’ he sobbed” (102). David, with this act, loses his natural childlike innocence. David’s clutching to a single truth causes him to lose that truth. Although he claims not to care, the text says otherwise. David’s weeping and crying suggests an awareness of his wrong-doing, and lost innocence. In Anderson’s introductory story “The Book of the Grotesque” the narrator relates the theory of an old writer. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. (24) David goes through just such a cycle. He withdraws from the urban world, and all its chaos, into nature. While withdrawn he comes to understand he fact that nature and natural living provide simple joys not available in the complexities of the modern world. He then must return to the modern world, and there the truth he gained becomes the only truth he believes in. This truth ultimately leads David astray, and he therefore becomes grotesque according to Anderson’s definition. This accomplished, David flees the urban world forever. He, “walked rapidly” away from the evidence of his actions “through fields and forests into the west” (102). No one in Winesburg ever sees David again. The image of him walking through nature, into the wildness of the American west leaves the impression that David forsakes the urban world. Anderson addresses the bleak disillusionment of the machine age in Winesburg, Ohio through his crafting of a narrator whose view of the modern world works in subtle conjunction with narrative convention. Anderson’s manipulation of his characters works as a discourse by which he propagates the idea that the modern world, in all its overwhelming complexities, must not overshadow the natural world that we come from. Anderson does not suggest that humankind give up modern life completely, and flee into the woods forever. However, his text does propose that we not lose the natural side of ourselves while living in this modern world. Bibliography: Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Penguin, 1992. Word Count: 2126
Copyright © 2005 College Term Papers, INC All Rights Reserved.