Grotesque In Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

As most of my mates noted, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio is very distressing. I concur with Ash58, it is very difficult to recall each individual characters. As I read along, I sensed the gloominess that Anderson is trying to achieve. The book is divided into multiple sections featuring different caricatures of the ideal “grotesque”, which is first mentioned in the “prologue”, The Book of the Grotesque. The “prologue” features a worrisome senile writer and a carpenter, who at the end is considered as one of the “very common people”. The writer is faced with reoccurring images of “grotesque” figures [people] in his lucid dreams. The narrator explains that, “The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful,

Winesburg, Ohio is the setting for all the occurrences. George Willard, who is a young reporter associated with the Winesburg Eagle, appears in most of the stories. Each of the stories shapes and develops George in some way or another. Many of the stories are directly associated with George. The stories become a part of his life by letting him see how addiction can consume a person's life. The story, Mother describes George’s earlier life and his relationship with his mother. In the story, Sophistication narrates the time when Helen and George expressed their fondness for each other (page 150). These stories are giving the notion that people should not become dependent over something or someone [truth]. In the tale The Strength of God, Reverend Hartman becomes preoccupied by a woman named, Kate Swift (page 88). In the following story The Teacher, Kate tries to get George’s attention (page 97). Instead of letting the “grotesque” grow inside of him, due to his fixation on her. George fought the urge and continued on with his life. With the interconnection between each of the stories, I speculate that George Willard is the old senile writer in the “prologue”, The Book of the Grotesque. I concur to this theory because of the many grotesque beings that the writer and George encountered. This seems to be an admonition from Sherwood Anderson, who presumably experienced what dependence [truth] can do to a person and how it manifests their