Winesburg Ohio

Sherwood Anderson was the author of Winesburg, Ohio, which is a collection of short
stories and sketches written between 1915 and 1917. With the publication of Winesburg, Ohio,
Anderson provided an example for fiction in which the plot arose naturally from the material that
was being created. The collection of short stories, established Sherwood Anderson’s reputation as a
major influence in American Literature. Anderson tried to depict American life as it is not as he
wants. He tried to find conclusions regarding not only American life in particular but human life in
general. He was strongly influenced by Gertrude Stein, and used poetic repetition and variations in
words, phrases, and sentence structures to convey his images of people and their circumstances.
Sherwood Anderson reiterated the sense of alienation, misunderstanding and isolation that
had become themes of much of the twentieth century American literature.
Hands the first story of the collection tells the life story of Wing Biddlebaum, the
protagonist of the story. He is an old man from the Middle -Age living in a house in Ohio and
waiting for his friend George Willard, who’s a reporter for the local newspaper. Adolph Meyers,
known as Wing Biddlebaum, the unfortunate school teacher with sensitive, wandering, caressing
hands, gets into trouble because of his loving touch upon his pupils is misinterpreted. His sin was
that he used his hands too much to teach others , this being also the reason of misunderstanding.
Wing’s trauma is that he needs to hide from the community because he is accused by molestation.
That’s why he also needs to hide his hands so that he won’t be misunderstoond again.
The story is a criticism brought to the modern contemporary community who judges other
people so easily. Ironically, the citizens of Winesburg are rather proud of Wing's nervous hands
which have picked a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. Production such as this the
town can understand and acclaim.
Wing Biddlebaum is not only frustrated but lonely, as are most of the citizens of Winesburg.
As the story begins, the old man is seen on his veranda late in the afternoon, wishing that George
Willard would visit him. The author then tells us about Wing's past in order to explain why the
former teacher is alienated and frightened. These intrusions of the author into the story give the
effect of an oral story teller, although the story is an interior monologue of the protagonist. George
Willard is used only as a pretext in the text for Wing to tell his story. The fact that George Willard
never comes, that in fact nothing really happens in the story, reinforces our awareness of the old
man's defeat and disillusion.
Anderson's manipulation of time - reviewing Wing's former life, then returning to the
present makes us aware by the technique he used for the story which is the technique of flash-back.
This means that the story doesn’t have a chronological order of the events. Also, there are two
settings in the story. The past which represents the real setting and the actual setting which is a
fictional one.
Even if Wing feels he constant need to hide his hands, Anderson consistently suggests that
hands are made for creative impulses, for communication. He makes of Wing Biddlebaum "an
imprisoned bird," an image reinforced not only by his nickname but by the reader's last glance of
him. Wing represents not only a new identity because he actually reinvents himself as long as the
community doesn’t know his past, but he cannot longer find strength to fly, that’s why he
encourages Willard to follow his dream to become a writer. Wing encourages a creativity that he
had lost.
As in so many of the Winesburg stories, its setting is night, suggesting the dark misery of the
lives of Anderson's characters. As Wing kneels on the floor, he is described as being "like a priest
engaged in some service of his church." This image, plus the old man's persecution by society and
his desire to show his love for others by the laying on of his hands, may make Wing seem to be a
Christ-like figure; but, if so, Anderson is suggesting that Christ is misunderstood and defeated in the
modern world.
Another change that also seems effective occurs in the sentence, "He raised the hands
[changed from "his hands"] to caress the boy." This change makes Wing's hands a personification
with a will of their own and thus conveys the helplessness of a man controlled by his compulsions.
In this helplessness lies the power of the story; "Hands" haunts us because we recognize in Wing
Biddlebaum our own helplessness and we see how thoughtlessly society can persecute what it does
not understand. Perhaps we see ourselves in both Wing and in the society that has ruined his life.