Here in my next installment of my look at Winesburg, Ohio, I’m going to cover two short stories. As you’ll see, they are intimately connected. And that is one of the things I love about Winesburg, Ohio—so many of the stories within the book turn out, in the end, to be connected in a way…
Respectability: An OverviewIn Winesburg, Ohio, the character of Wash Williams is both revolting and immensely pitiable. At the very beginning of the story, Wash is compared to an ugly, dirty, grotesque monkey in a cage. He was the telegraph operator of Winesburg, and “the ugliest thing in town.” We are told that everything about him…
In this next look at the characters in Winesburg, Ohio, I’m going to look at two different stories. The first story is titled, “Nobody Knows,” and it is about George Willard. The second story is titled, “Adventure,” and it is about a woman named Alice Hindman. Nobody Knows: Overview“Nobody Knows” is a very short story…
The next citizen of Winesburg, Ohio is a man named Doctor Parcival. Unlike the other characters we’ve encountered, Doctor Parcival is not a pitiable character like Wing Biddlebaum, or a tender and sweet character like Doctor Reefy, or a sad character like Elizabeth Willard. Doctor Parcival is not really likable at all. The Philosopher: An…
One of the saddest characters in Winesburg, Ohio is Elizabeth Willard, the mother of George Willard. We first met George in the story of “Hands”—he was the town newspaper reporter to whom Wing Biddlebaum took a liking. In actuality, George pops up in several of the stories in Winesburg, Ohio. In this fourth story, “Mother,”…
Perhaps my favorite story in Winesburg, Ohio is “Paper Pills,” the story about one Dr. Reefy and the beautiful young woman he married who, died shortly with a year after their marriage. No, there was nothing sinister. But we’ll get to that soon enough. First, let’s look at the story. Paper Pills: An OverviewThe story…
The first full story in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is a story titled, “Hands.” It is one of my favorites. It is the story of an odd “fat little old man” in Winesburg named Wing Biddlebaum. He lived in a house just outside of town, next to a field that had been seeded for clover,…
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…
Here we are at the end of 2024. As I’ve look back over the topics I covered this year on resurrecting orthodoxy, I noticed that a good number of my posts this year had to do with, shall we say, a very specific “war” going on within the largely Evangelical world: Left vs. Right, Woke…
Well, it’s the Christmas season, and as to be expected, many “social media scholars” have posted material that deals with the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke. One such scholar is someone I’ve written a couple of my own posts on over this past year—Dan McClellan. And so, today I thought I’d write yet another…