Summary Without a doubt, Elmer Cowley is queer, or different. Yet before his family sold their farm and moved into Winesburg, Elmer was evidently a fairly happy individual. He remembers, “I worked and at night I went to bed and slept. I wasn’t always seeing people and thinking.” In town, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Queer””Summary and Analysis An Awakening””
Summary “An Awakening” is one of several of the Winesburg stories that deal with George Willard’s experience with various women. We have read of George’s evening with Louise Trunnion in “Nobody Knows”; later, we will read of the evening he; spends with Helen White in “Sophistication.” In “An Awakening,” we […]
Read more Summary and Analysis An Awakening””Summary and Analysis Loneliness””
Summary Much of Enoch Robinson’s story takes place in New York City, but “Loneliness” belongs in Winesburg, Ohio for two reasons. First, Enoch Robinson is, like most of the people of Winesburg, a lonely person. In his case, his loneliness is caused partly by his devotion to art. At twenty-one, […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Loneliness””Summary and Analysis The Teacher””
Summary To recognize fully the ironies in “The Strength of God,” we must also read “The Teacher.” This helps us to understand why Kate Swift threw herself weeping on her bed as Reverend Hartman watched, We see too that the climax of the two stories really occurred simultaneously and this […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The Teacher””Summary and Analysis The Strength of God””
Summary The story of Reverend Curtis Hartman, one of the most powerful characters in the book, is built of irony piled upon irony. Of course, all irony is based on contrast, whether it be between what is said and what is meant, what seems to be true and what is […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The Strength of God””Summary and Analysis Tandy””
Summary In “Tandy” we meet three interesting characters. Tom Hard, the hard-hearted agnostic, is so busy trying to destroy everyone’s belief in God that he can’t see God manifested in his own daughter. The child is more appreciated by a tall, red-haired young alcoholic from Cleveland, who stays in Winesburg […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Tandy””Summary and Analysis The Thinker””
Summary The central character in this story is not, as one might suspect from the title, a wise old citizen; he is a boy about George Willard’s age. This boy, Seth Richmond, who is reserved and inarticulate, has earned the reputation of being a “thinker.” Even his mother is a […]
Read more Summary and Analysis The Thinker””Summary and Analysis Respectability””
Summary Wash Williams, like Alice Hindman, is an example of how unreliable appearance can be. Wash is the ugliest man in Winesburg. He is so fat and dirty that he looks like a huge, grotesque monkey — a kind of mandrill, as Anderson describes him. Wash is also psychologically grotesque […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Respectability””Summary and Analysis Adventure””
Summary The story of Alice Hindman is another study in appearance and reality. Alice, at twenty-seven, is a quiet, shy clerk in Winney’s Dry Goods Store, but Anderson tells us “beneath a placid exterior a continual ferment went on.” The first part of the story is really about the absence […]
Read more Summary and Analysis Adventure””Summary and Analysis A Man of Ideas””
Summary Joe Welling, a man of ideas, is proof that Anderson’s grotesques aren’t all horrible and hopeless. Indeed, Joe might better be described as ludicrous, for this strange little Standard Oil agent is very quiet and polite until he is seized by an idea; then he becomes uncontrollable. Words roll […]
Read more Summary and Analysis A Man of Ideas””