Life was not simple for those living in the American Midwest in the late 1800s. The times were changing. Small towns were no longer adequate places for success for the ambitious. Now, the big towns were the place to be. Sherwood Anderson, a well known American writer, was caught in this transition. The situation and place he was born in made his life tough. The difficult and problematic upbringing he had in Ohio allowed him to describe the isolation and lack of opportunities in small Midwestern towns, which he portrayed in his works by using imagery, conflicts within characters, and symbolism.
Sherwood Anderson was born in Camden, Ohio on September 13, 1876. He lived there for a short time, and later his family moved to a town called Clyde, Ohio. This was the place where Anderson’s life would be formed. Life for Anderson and his family was difficult. Irwin Anderson, Sherwood Anderson’s father, lost his job, and put his family in a tough financial situation. This event caused Sherwood Anderson to drop out of high school and take various jobs to support the family. Also, the town in which he lived in did not provide many good opportunities for the future. It was just another small, somewhat isolated Midwestern town.
Though it may seem that Anderson had no hope as a child, one thing that kept him upbeat was reading. Anderson’s love of it led him to have a great imagination and observational skills. Some of the writers he was influenced by were Carl Sandburg and Gertrude Stein. This combination of events and influences in his childhood had a large effect on the works he would later write (“Sherwood Anderson”) (“Sherwood Anderson’s Biography”). As an adult, Sherwood Anderson did not want to be subject to the same difficulties he had faced in his childhood. He moved out of his small town in favor of Chicago.
By living there, Anderson began to change his life around for the better. For example, he was able to finish his high school education. He later got married, had children, and moved out of Chicago in order to make more money for his family. Anderson managed to create his own successful manufacturing company. The problems of childhood were now distant, distasteful memories (“Sherwood Anderson’s Biography”) (“Sherwood Anderson”). Life seemed to be going well for Sherwood Anderson. He had an education, family, and money. However, this pleasant life was not that good at all.
Personally, Anderson was struggling between his job, which would support his family, and his love of literature, which had been growing since the creation of his company. Also, he “was quite the lady’s man and the marriage did not slow him down. ” (“Sherwood Anderson’s Biography”). These troubles led to a life changing event. On November 28, 1912, Sherwood Anderson had a mental breakdown. He was at work as usual, but at one point in the day he walked out of his office and disappeared. He walked around aimlessly in town and could not remember anything about his life. After a few days, he was found and eventually regained his memory.
However, this experience allowed him to make the choice between his duty to his family and his passion of writing. He became a writer. (“Sherwood Anderson’s Biography”) (“A Brief Biography 1876-1941. “) One of Sherwood Anderson’s most famous works was Winesburg, Ohio. It is a collection of 25 short stories. All of them are about a small town called Winesburg, Ohio. It is a rural town, and can be compared to many Midwestern towns during the late 1800s. It is believed that Clyde, Ohio, the town where Sherwood Anderson was raised, served as an inspiration for Winesburg.
The stories are about the residents of Winesburg and some of the issues they faced in their daily lives. One of the stories in this collection is titled “Sophistication. ” It is about a young man by the name of George Willard and his close friend Helen White. George is going through the troubling time of transition between boyhood and manhood, in which he does not know what to do with himself. He wanders around town looking for some sort of future for his life. While he is walking around, George is angry, confused, and alone. He eventually decides to go to Helen White’s house and to talk to her.
Helen is going through a tough situation at the same time as George. She is with at the town fair with an instructor from her college in Cleveland, Ohio. At first, she is happy to be with him, as he would impress her old friends, but she later just wants him to go. The man acts as if he is too important and sophisticated to be at the fair, and this annoys Helen. She thinks of George Willard and how she would love to be with him, and she leaves the instructor. Eventually, George and Helen meet up, and they go to an empty area of the fairground to be alone.
George was finally able to calm down, and Helen was feeling much better than before. (Anderson “Sophistication”) The literary elements of imagery, conflict, and symbolism play a big role in true meaning and message of “Sophistication. ” There are various aspects to the story that Anderson made sure to write about. One of these was the timeframe. He set the story to be in late fall, which is a time where trees become bare and nights come sooner. It is more of a despairing time than either spring or summer. Anderson also writes about the irritation and anger felt by the main characters of the story.
These emotions show how those who are alone and seem to have no hope for life may feel. The struggles of the main characters represent the atmosphere of isolation and limited hope that could be found in small towns like Winesburg. Another work that Sherwood Anderson wrote is called A Death in the Woods and Other Stories. There are 16 short stories in this book. One of them is titled “Death is the Woods,” and it is narrated for the third-person point of view. It is about a poor, old woman by the name of Mrs. Grimes and the story of her struggles in life, from childhood to her death.
The arrator begins the story by describing her daily routine, and that no one takes special notice of her when she was alive, for there were many women like her in small towns. Then, he tells the audience about Mrs. Grimes’s disliked husband and how he meets her. Mrs. Grimes is a bound girl, essentially a slave, at a farm when she is a child and is abused by a farmer. Eventually, Jake Grimes, her future husband, comes and saves her from the terrible place. Mrs. Grimes has two children with Jake, one daughter and one son, but the daughter died at a young age. The narrator makes a note of the fact that Mrs.
Grimes always has to feed someone or something during her life. At first, she had to feed the farmer, his wife, and their animals, and now she has to feed her farm animals, husband, and son. It turns out Jake was always getting into trouble, and later his son joins him. The two always get drunk and disappear for weeks at a time, only to come back home and abuse Mrs. Grimes. She was in charge of the household as the two men were rarely home, and they never worked even if they were home. The narrator goes on to describe, in great detail, the struggle Mrs. Grimes goes through to keep herself and her animals alive, especially during the winter.
She has to make a long trek to town to get scraps of meat from the butcher and other food from other shops. Some dogs begin to follow her when she goes to town and then follow on the way back. She decides to take a shortcut home through the forest in order to make it home quicker but then wa nts to sit down and rest for a while. Mrs. Grimes was not able to get up from her nap and died on her journey home. The dogs that were with her begin to eat the food that she was carrying but not her body. In the end, some people from the town discover the body and bring it back to town. (Anderson, “Death in the Woods”)
