Saturday, July 20, 2019
The Nature of Humanity in the Work of Sherwood Anderson Essay -- Human
The Nature of Humanity in the Work of Sherwood Anderson A common staple of horror storiesââ¬âin film and on the pageââ¬âis the scene of the frightened and indignant villagers chasing the monster who has been terrorizing the townsfolk. In Sherwood Andersonââ¬â¢s ââ¬Å"Hands,â⬠the protagonist, Adolph Myers (Wing Biddlebaum) is a well-intentioned individual whose actions the people around him contort so that he becomes more fiend than friend. In Wing Biddlebaum, the very aspects of his character that make him human are those that society distorts to make him into a maladapted monster: first, the mystery that surrounds him causes the townspeople to misunderstand him; second, because of the accusations of his pedophilic homosexuality stemming from this misunderstanding, they demonized him into a pariah; and, third, the guilt that the ââ¬Å"mobâ⬠forces him to feel ultimately confines him to his own prison of anguish. Approaching the story from this perspective demonstrates that Wingââ¬â¢s destiny is almost beyond his control, a destiny significantly manufactured by his societyââ¬â¢s judgments. Wing is an extremely intricate person; however, most of the people among whom he lived in Pennsylvania before his current residence in Ohio failed to recognize this, as do his fellow citizens in the town of Winesburg. Anderson describes him as ââ¬Å"one of those rare, little-understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weaknessâ⬠(13). Just as his previous neighbors were unable to understand Wing fully, so are those among whom he currently lives: ââ¬Å"the depth and complexity of [his] sufferingâ⬠baffles them (Elledge 11). The very profundity of Wingââ¬â¢s situation explains why he ââ¬Å"for twenty years had been the town mystery,â⬠although osten... ...While he is obviously no monster, ironically, his weakness and frailty as a limited mortal prolong his fall from grace, making a rise from such a fall seem insurmountable, tragically preserving the inaccurate image of his soul as that of a mere depraved, malevolent, and corrupting offense to human decency. Works Cited Anderson, Sherwood. ââ¬Å"Hands.â⬠Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Bantam, 1995. 8-15. Brown, Lynda. ââ¬Å"Andersonââ¬â¢s Wing Biddlebaum and Freemanââ¬â¢s Louisa Ellis.â⬠Studies in Short Fiction 27.3 (1990): 413-414. Elledge, Jim. ââ¬Å"Danteââ¬â¢s Lovers in Sherwood Andersonââ¬â¢s ââ¬ËHands.ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬ Studies in Short Fiction 21.1 (1984): 11-15. Morgan, Gwendolyn. ââ¬Å"Andersonââ¬â¢s ââ¬ËHands.ââ¬â¢Ã¢â¬ The Explicator 48.1 (1989): 46-47. Updike, John. ââ¬Å"Twisted Apples: On Winesburg, Ohio.â⬠The American Short Story and Its Writer. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford, 2000. 1464-1468.
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