-XISU-MWZ-

Book: Winesburg, Ohio

Author: Sherwood Anderson

Reading Time: 2011.5.1-2011.5.22

Desperation, Hope & Truth

The moment I closed the book Winesburg, Ohio, I wanted to cry out. I didn’t know what to say, I just wanted to make some noise to disperse the dreadful silence around me.

I read the book in the library. The library was like the small town, Winesburg. Everyone was connected somehow, but each had their own way of living. They probably had never thought of getting to know more people around them. I wanted to talk to someone, which was of course no way there. People in the building were all busy with their work. I could hear pens rustling on papers. Even pens were in a hurry to reach the bottom of a page. There was heavy desperation within me.

People in Winesburg shared something. They wanted to express but didn’t know how, they wanted to find the truth, and they wanted to be loved by human beings. They lived with desperation emerged from isolation. They suffered during the process. Ironically, they lived this way not because they had done something sinful and couldn’t be forgiven by God. It was truth itself that led them to misery and to being alienated. “That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful…It was the truths that made people grotesques… It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.” Nobody had committed a crime; however, just nobody else could understand him. These grotesques lived in their own little world respectively; the only connection was probably their relationship with George Willard.

 George Willard shared people’s lives, and he himself was also undergoing a process of awakening, in his relationship with the world, himself, and love. He wanted to live a man’s life. He many times made up his mind to be a good writer and be away from home. He was loosely connected with his surroundings. People in Winesburg shared their secret lives with him. Silent Seth was his friend; Kate wanted to tell what the life really was to her student; the Reverend Curtis Hartman shouted out to George what he had found out on a bitter cold night; Wash Williams told the young his woman and gave him warns…George in Winesburg actually learned the world. He looked the town which was a mirror of the real world. There were desperation such as Alice and Kate, who were not understood along with many other lonely souls. What probably could be seen as a sign of hope was that George in the end took the train to larger cities to find his fortune. However, I can’t tell whether he would live better in other places, because the world was more or less the same everywhere. “Tom had seen a thousand George Willards go out of their hometown to the city…After George counted his money he looked out of the window and was surprised to see that the train was still in Winesburg…when he arouse himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.” George would take all his memories to live his later life in the city. It was impossible for him to forget the little things and people back at home, I think. The only thing was that he was not psychologically mature enough to appreciate the bitter and sweet in life. He was only a boy trapped in a man.

One character in Winesburg, Ohio that impressed me is in the chapter The Strength of God, the Reverend Curtis Hartman. He was really a miserable man. I think he was a sacrifice for his job. As a priest, he was afraid to speak in front of his people. He always prayed before the sermon, “Give me strength and courage for Thy, O Lord!” “He wondered of the flames of the spirit really burned in him and dreamed of a day when a strong sweet current of power would become like a great wind into his voice and his soul and the people would tremble before the spirit of God made manifest in him.” Seriously, he was definitely a responsible priest. He thought God sent Kate Swift as a test on him. He was lightened by Kate’s body though a hole on the glass window accidentally. Since then, his sermons became vivid with passion and aliveness. However, this pious man thought he was sinful to think about other woman out of his “happy” marriage. Actually, he was no more a worldly man; he was not strictly prevented from a blameless life. As time passed by, Hartman became confused. He could not figure out what the God wanted from him; he didn’t know that he himself wanted. “The ways of God are beyond human understanding.” On a bitter could night he dragged himself to the cabin to peer at Kate to prove himself as a qualified minister. That night saw Hartman at the edge of enlightenment and insanity. Looking at naked Kate, Hartman, who was persisting at the risk of being frozen to death, cried out, “God has manifested himself to me in the body of a woman…What I took to b a trial of my soul was only a preparation for a new and more beautiful fervor of the spirit…she is an instrument of God, bearing message of truth.” So what was the eternal truth? “I am delivered. Have no fear.” “I smashed the glass of the window…The strength of God was in me and I broke it with my fist.” I think what Hartman had gone through is a process of how to face one’s desires deeply rooted in his/her heart. Desires are like Kate, people want to fulfill desires just like Hartman wanted to regularly look at Kate. God is conventional moral standard. There is fear in people’s heart to prevent them from going to far away from so-called proper behaviors. They have to consider what others will think about them. There is to be struggle. Only holes on the window can sometimes satisfy the want. In the end, Hartman smashed the window until it had to be wholly replaced. The understatement here is that one day people will break conventions to seek pleasure. This is the truth. Glass is the symbol of obstacles on way to happiness. Hartman held up his bleeding fist to tell, it’s painful to go beyond oneself; once one makes it, there will be no fear. He had the truth within himself that: no hypocrisy but do be honest to yourself!