A new year is upon us, so I wanted to start off this new year on my blog with a literary series about a book that I long have loved: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Published in 1919, it is one of the often-overlooked gems of American Literature.
Now, I had never even heard of Sherwood Anderson or Winesburg, Ohio until 1993, when I was teaching English as a foreign language in Kazakhstan as a member of the Peace Corps. When the Peace Corps group I was in was sent to Kazakhstan for our initial training in the summer of 1993, we were told that we would be given teaching supplies and books by the time we were sent out on our assignments in the fall. Well, those supplies and books didn’t arrive until November, and when they did, what we got were not supplies or books to help teach English as a foreign language.
What we got were boxes and boxes of Penguin Classics. That’s right, our US government sent to Peace Corps volunteers in Kazakhstan endless copies of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, and books by Flaubert, Nietzsche, Proust…the list can go on. Needless to say, you can’t really use Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Flaubert to teach elementary conversational English to Kazakh nationals. That being said, there was a set of Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. I read the book for myself and found that the English was pretty basic, and so I tried to have my “advanced class” try to read some of it. It still was mostly over their heads, but I certainly had found a great book for me to read!
And so, I have enjoyed Winesburg, Ohio for the past 30 years. These past couple of years, I’ve even been able to teach a few of its stories to my high school English classes. The more I read it, the more I like it. And now, I’ve decided to cover it here on my blog to start off 2025.
Winesburg, Ohio isn’t a novel, but neither can it be characterized as a collection of short stories, although the stories are certainly short. Instead, the entire book is centered on the fictious small town of Winesburg in Ohio, set in the early 20th century. Every different chapter in the book tells a curious story about a different resident in the town. What makes each chapter and story intriguing is that we get insight into the inner lives and thoughts of these various characters. If you will, it is a fascinating look into the inner psychology of people’s lives.
All in all, there are 24 stories in Winesburg, Ohio. What I will do over the next few posts is to share my favorite stories from the book. I will (if possible) provide a link to the story for you to read, and then I will share my thoughts and analysis of each story.
The Book of the Grotesque: A Quick Summary
The first story in Winesburg, Ohio is titled “The Book of the Grotesque.” It is all but 2-3 pages long. It essentially serves as a preface to the stories in the book, in that it lays out the basic theme/thesis that Anderson traces through every story. This initial story, though, focuses primarily on two characters: an old writer and an old carpenter he gets to come and build a platform for his bed.
We are told the old carpenter had been a soldier in the Civil War, had been a prisoner in the Andersonville prison, and had lost a brother during the war who had died of starvation. We are also told that the old carpenter cried when he told the old writer this. Both had white mustaches and were smoking cigars, and when the old carpenter cried, we are told he puckered his lips, and his mustache bobbed up and down: “The weeping old man with the cigar in his mouth was ludicrous.” That might sound cruel to say, but we will see why that description is apropos.
We are then told something about the old writer. He smoked and his heart fluttered, and he fully expected to die unexpectedly. That being said, the thought didn’t alarm him, due to the fact that there was “something inside him [that] was altogether young.” He is described as a pregnant woman who had a “youth” inside him—this “thing” inside him is described as a young woman “wearing a coat of mail like a knight.”
In any case, we are then told of a strange “dream that was not a dream” the writer had. In it, that indescribable thing within him (the young woman in a coat of mail) was leading a procession of figures before his eyes—they were all grotesques. What that means is that all of them, in one way or another, were “out of shape” in some way. One figure in particular was a woman who “hurt the old man by her grotesqueness,” so much so that he whimpered like a small dog when she passed.
We are then told that that “dream” affected the writer and impelled him to write a book titled, The Book of the Grotesque. The main thought or thesis of his book is basically a commentary on the state of humanity. Here it is in bullet-point form:
- When the world was young, there were many thoughts but no such thing as truth.
- Men eventually took the thoughts and made truths out of them, and all the truths were beautiful: truths like virginity, passion, wealth, poverty, thrift, profligacy, carelessness, and abandon.
- People though ended up snatching up truths for themselves. Some would snatch up one, others maybe a dozen. When that happened…
- “It was the truths that made the people grotesques. …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.”
This initial story ends by telling us that this idea of the writer became so big in his mind that he was in danger of becoming a grotesque, but in the end, he didn’t. Why? It was the same reason he never published his book—“it was the young thing inside him that saved the old man.”
The Book of the Grotesque: My Thoughts
This initial chapter lays out the major idea that runs all throughout Winesburg, Ohio. Each chapter is pretty much a glimpse inside the various people of the town, and we, the reader, see how each character (or at least most of them) are, in their own way “grotesque.” The point should be clear: most people in this world are, in some way or another, “grotesque”—misshapen, out of order, or distorted in their souls primarily because they try to live their entire life and define their entire selves according to one truth.
Take for example the figure of the old carpenter at the beginning of the story. His experience in the Civil War and the tragedy of his brother’s death didn’t just affect him, it ended up defining who he was. It was the singular truth that he ended up living his life by. That is why the narrator described his crying over his brother’s death as “ludicrous”—not ludicrous in a mocking way, but more in a sad and pitiful way.
That is why the narrator emphasizes that not all the grotesques the old writer saw in his dream were horrible. Just think about people you may know, or people you are aware of. Some people’s entire identity revolves around, let’s say, around a certain sports team, or a music band or artist. When a teenager covers his room with posters of a certain team or band, he is doing it, not just because likes them. He’s doing it because he is searching for an identity—he’s trying to figure out who he is. That’s what I did in junior high with the Chicago Cubs. In fact, that’s what younger people inevitably do, because they are searching for their own identity.
Now, I still like the Cubs. But if you came into my house and found that every room was littered with Chicago Cubs stuff everywhere, you’d probably think there is something kind of weird when a 55-year-old man still is that obsessed with a sports team. It’s not necessarily bad or horrible—but it would be a sign that I was a “grotesque” in that I was defining my very self by the Chicago Cubs. And that is the central message, not only of this story, but of the entire book of Winesburg, Ohio as well. With every character in the book, we see how the events and choices in one’s life end up affecting what kind of person one is, and it is how one deals with such things that determine how “grotesque” one becomes (or if one becomes a grotesque at all).
But the overall “central thought” expressed in the old writer’s book is quite profound: clinging to one truth alone and defining yourself by it causes you to be a grotesque and turns that truth into a falsehood. Why is that? I think the point goes to the fact that life cannot be reduced to one thing. Indeed, people cannot be reduced to one thing. Clinging to one thing, even if it is true, limits the larger truth of who you are as a person. That is why the writer lists various “truths” that seemingly are opposites. It’s much like what we read in Ecclesiastes—there is a time for everything, even things that seem to be opposite of each other. Therefore, when you limit yourself to living by only one singular truth, you are limiting your own personhood and growth—and you end up not being able to be the fully mature person you can be…and I would argue, the full image-bearer of God that God has created you to be. And because you have limited yourself to one, singular defining truth, that truth ends up becoming a falsehood, because God has created you to be something more that just that one thing.
And that, I think, is why the old writer sees that doing such a thing turns you into a grotesque. To put it in biblical terms, when you do that, you are settling to be something less than a full image-bearer of God. The result being that you are not fully in the “shape” of what God has intended you to be. You are a distortion of your true self. Now, like the old writer saw, not all distortions are evil or bad—some are quirky and funny. But they single a person not being a full image-bearer nonetheless.
Another thing to note in this story is the “young woman” that is inside the old writer. One can understand why this “thing” is described as young and wearing armor—it is a way of saying that the old writer was able to remain “young at heart,” instead of letting himself become old and cynical. But why is this “young thing” described as a woman? No, I don’t think it is any early 20th century comment about transgenderism. Rather, I think it a commentary on what constitutes a fuller, more mature and well-rounded human being. Yes, a person is either a man or a woman, and men are more “masculine,” whereas women are more “feminine.” But to be a more complete human being, a man, for example, has to get more in touch with his “feminine side,” if you will, and vice versa. I think that is pretty much the point of marriage. One marries someone of the opposite sex, commits your life to that person, and you both, in your very masculinity and femininity, challenge that other person to mature and grow in that regard.
Related to that, I think it is interesting that in his dream, the old writer sees a particular woman drawn out of shape that hurts him and makes him cry. Who is this woman? I tend to think it is an old lover, perhaps a former wife, and there has been some sort of brokenness in the relationship. Perhaps she had hurt him, or he had hurt her, and the memory of doing that caused him regret and pain. In any case, I think it represents what is almost inevitable happens in everyone’s life at some point.
In any case, we are told at the end that this idea regarding “what makes one a grotesque” became so profound to the old writer that he was in danger of becoming a grotesque—meaning, this “truth” he realized threatened to dominate his entire life. But we are told he didn’t become a grotesque, and the narrator says it had something to do with his decision never to publish the book. Theoretically, if the book had been published, the old writer would have been known solely as “The Book of the Grotesque guy.” That would have pigeon-holed him and defined him (much like artists, writers, or athletes end up becoming defined by one single book, or song, or game). His decision not to publish the book kept him from that.
Again, I think that it quite beautiful and profound. In any case, that central thought regarding what makes a person “grotesque” is woven throughout Winesburg, Ohio, and is, I believe, a vital key to understanding human beings in general. As we go through the various chapters of the book in this blog series, we will see that central thought coming up time and time again in the secret lives of the citizens of Winesburg.
