Story Cycle: Community Imagination and Imaginary Community

聯篇故事與社區想像

Spring, 2007

A Seminar with Prof. Chen Chi-szu
Latest Update: 2007/03/18

Notes on Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (II), 2007/03/13

·            “Hands,” concerning Wing Biddlebaum

1.          Synecdoche:

The word “hands” appear 30 times in this story.

“Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands.”

“The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands.”

The touching, caressing hands: femininity

The working hands: masculinity, work ethics

2.          Feminine: The character of Wing Biddlebaum is feminine, if not gay.

 Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, little-understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men. (12)

3.          Work ethics: The feminine characteristics of W.B.’s hands are suppressed, while the male one—the one that in lines with Puritan work ethics is highly valued.

In Winesburg the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity. With them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame. Also they made more grotesque an already grotesque and elusive individuality. Winesburg was proud of the hands of Wing Biddlebaum in the same spirit in which it was proud of Banker White's new stone house and Wesley Moyer's bay stallion, Tony Tip, that had won the two-fifteen trot at the fall races in Cleveland. (10)

What makes his hands more grotesque? The villager’s obsession with the conception of work ethics or B.’s own suppression? Is the oppressor of the oppressed more grotesque?

4.          What does the “pastoral golden age” symbolize?

"You are destroying yourself," he cried. "You have the inclination to be alone and to dream and you are afraid of dreams. You want to be like others in town here. You hear them talk and you try to imitate them."

Compare with Wing Biddlebaum’s dream and the school child’s dream

Out of the dream Wing Biddlebaum made a picture for George Willard. In the picture men lived again in a kind of pastoral golden age. Across a green open country came clean-limbed young men, some afoot, some mounted upon horses. In crowds the young men came to gather about the feet of an old man who sat beneath a tree in a tiny garden and who talked to them.

5.          What is Wing Biddlebaum’s grotesque thought?

·            “Paper Pills,” concerning Doctor Reefy

1.          metaphors: the knuckles of the doctor’s hands, the twisted little apples, paper pills.
Do you think “The Twisted Little Apples” would be a better title for this story?
* The twisted little apples: associated with the fruit of Eden, with the knuckles of the doctor’s hands, and with the personality of Doctor Reefy and of his wife.
* The paper pills: Doctor Reefy’s various beautiful thoughts, which he shares with his friend and his wife. Sharing thoughts could be healing!

2.          The twist little apples, which are rejected, neglected, but taste unusually sweet. Can this metaphor works for the aesthetic of the grotesque?

3.          Why Doctor Reefy’s wife is not named, and is only referred as the dark girl?

·            “Mother,” concerning Elizabeth Willard

1.          This story is put after, “Paper Pills”: First, the marriage between Elizabeth Willard and Tom Willard is in direct opposite to that between Doctor Reefy and the dark girl. Second, near the end of the story cycle, in “Death,” we get to know that Elizabeth Willard formed a friendship with Doctor Reefy for his understanding and sharing personality. Third, the death of the dark girl, and the death of Elizabeth are also a contrast.

·            “Godliness”

This “tale in four parts” depicts the historical and social milieu of the fictional town Winesburg. Two forces cast shadows on the life styles of the small town people and pull the peaceful pastoral past apart. One the one hand, the impact and aftermath of Civil Wars undermines the old provincial social order; on the other hand, the coming of industrialism creates new dynamics and destabilizes the old values. The puritan work ethics gets new impetus. The individualist tradition in American fiction undergoes a new transformation. On both side of the pulling string stand Jesse Bentley, one who cling to the ancient patriarchal values of the Old Testament, and George Willard, one who links to the door to the industrialized future, but is highly expected by various town people to tell their stories to make their suppressed dream or vision visible in the confusion of the present.

·            “Godliness” Parts I and II—concerning Jesse Bentley

narrator: external

focalizer: Jesse Bentley

By the time the American Civil War had been over for twenty years, that part of Northern Ohio where the Bentley farms lay had begun to emerge from pioneer life. Jesse then owned machinery for harvesting grain. He had built modern barns and most of his land was drained with carefully laid tile drain, but in order to understand the man we will have to go back to an earlier day. (30)

 The Civil War brought a sharp turn to the fortunes of the Bentleys and was responsible for the rise of the youngest son, Jesse. Enoch, Edward, Harry, and Will Bentley all enlisted and before the long war ended they were all killed. For a time after they went away to the South, old Tom tried to run the place, but he was not successful. When the last of the four had been killed he sent word to Jesse that he would have to come home. (31)

Jesse Bentley was a fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and place and for this he suffered and made others suffer. Never did he succeed in getting what he wanted out of fife and he did not know what he wanted. (32)

It will perhaps be somewhat difficult for the men and women of a later day to understand Jesse Bentley. 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 inter-urban car lines that weave in and out of towns 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. Books, badly imagined and written though they may be in the hurry of our times, are in every household, magazines circulate by the millions of copies, newspapers are everywhere. 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. (34)

·            “Godliness” Part III—Surrender—concerning Louise Bentley

The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions, was telling its story to Jesse the man of God as it was to the men about him. The greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be made by tilling the land. (40)

·            “Godliness” Part IV—Terror—concerning David Hardy

Chen Chi-szu,
Assistant Professor,
English Department,
Tamkang University

kiss7445@mail.tku.edu.tw:

Office: 
(02)26215656 ext.2966
Room: FL632