Wineburg, Ohio Essay

Popular culture is the artistic and creative expression in entertainment and style that appeals to society as whole. It includes music, film, sports, painting, sculpture, and even photography. It can be diffused in many ways, but one of the most powerful and effective ways to address society is through film and television. Broadcasting, radio and television are the primary means by which information and entertainment are delivered to the public in virtually every nation around the world, and they have become a crucial instrument of modern social and political organization. Most of today’s television programming genres are derived from earlier media such as stage, cinema and radio. In the area of comedy, sitcoms have proven

In Sherwood Anderson’s book Winesburg, Ohio, the term “grotesque” is used to describe some individuals of the titular town who lets a personal truth control his life. Letting the truth control his life often leads to a feeling of loneliness. Examples of grotesques are Wing Biddlebaum, Elmer Cowley, and Alice Hindman.

On our journey to Brownsville the first struggle we encountered was with transportation to get to Broadway Junction. Of course the MTA isn't always reliable but there were frequent stops in between stops. While waiting for the train to get up and running again various people said things like “ugh not again,” “Something always happens on the A” and other similar phrases as well as others that seemed accustomed to train issues. Now if you think about it, the A train is highly populated by Hispanics and Black people. Could this have to do with why the MTA hasn't attempted to fix their transit situation. On another note most of the trains heading toward Brooklyn and the Bronx have the older not modernized train carts than the ones heading toward Manhattan or Queens. Theres a huge change in atmosphere just in the manner of transportation.

Andrew Largeman's (Zack Braff) journey throughout "Garden State" seems to be a testament on the meaning of liberation. Going from his struggling acting life in Los Angeles to his hometown in New Jersey, where he witnesses his mother's funeral, Andrew is in the mist of confronting difficult issues. One of the biggest issues is coming to terms with his psychologist father (Ian Holm), whom he has distanced himself from for many years because he has put him on powerful antidepressants for most of his life. The reason for this I will not reveal but it has caused Andrew to feel as if his father has controlled his life in a way.

As G-Unit Rapper Tony Yayo once said “You can take me out the hood, but you can’t take the hood out of me’’, A location can define and paint its citizen the same way Sherwood Anderson paints the character’s as being grotesque in Winesburg, Ohio. It is very evident that the characters hold certain truth about themselves which are influenced by where they from or lived and their history, they become these truths which indeed make them grotesque. The question is, is it fair to say Winesburg, Ohio makes it citizens become grotesque?

In Sherwood Anderson’s “Hands,” it is Wing Biddlebaum’s story who becomes an outsider himself by his hands. He was a teacher in

     Written by Sherwood Anderson in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of short stories, allows us to enter the alternately complex, lonely, joyful, and strange lives of the inhabitants of the small town of Winesburg, Ohio. While each character finds definition through their role in the community, we are witness to the individual struggle each faces in trying to reconcile their secret life within. A perfect example of two characters are Alice Hindman and Enoch Robinson. The loneliness and illusion that encompass the lives of Alice Hindman and Enoch Robinson are the result of the discrepancy between their own capacity for intimacy and affection and the inability of others to truly understand them.

A lot can happen in sixty years, and America is no exception to that statement. It is arguable that one of the biggest differences regarding America in the 1950s to modern America is culture. The movie “Pleasantville” reflects much of these cultural differences from 1950s to today in a creative and thoughtful way. It also provides much useful insight into the cultural conflicts America faced throughout the 1950s. The many differences between 1950s culture and modern day culture, my own opinion which time period I would personally choose to live in and cultural conflicts of the 1950s will be discussed throughout this essay.

The word grotesque describes a person who develops bizarre traits as a result of emotional problems. This similar characteristic among people of different stories yet familiar sufferings develop an underlying trend in the community. The handling of their emotional trauma makes these characters grotesque because they develop a new perspective of life and reflect the past, present, and future. As reporter George Willard interacts with individuals in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Willard is exposed to the grotesques and their stories that changed their outlook on life forever. In the book, the stories concerning characters Jesse Bentley, Alice Hindman, and Enoch Robinson exemplify the development of a grotesque individual as a result of traumatic incidents.

The real world is a lonely place. There are times in this life that we feel rejected, and feel as if we do not have anyone to talk to. When someone finally comes along to make conversation about literally nothing, it’s just the conversation that makes us feel not so alone anymore. We don’t have to feel like we’re looking for something when we have someone to talk to. “George can tell you screwy things, and it don’t matter it’s the talking. It’s just being with another guy. That’s all.” This excerpt from the story tells you what that feeling is

Nevertheless, Wing is still plagued by doubts about his hands and is “striving to conceal” them even in the fields. Anderson writes, “The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads” (Anderson 4). Another recurring image is Wing’s tendency to hide his hands in his pockets. This image occurs several times over the duration of Anderson’s story. In another instance Anderson writes, “Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression” (Anderson 3). This image is repeated again when Wing is conversing with George. Wing is horrified by the sight of his own hands and “With a convulsive movement of his body, Wing Biddlebaum sprang to his feet and thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets” (Anderson 5).

One could argue that Winesburg, Ohio is a Modernist text because it is anti-romantic. Though friendships and affectionate relationships are depicted in the text, characters seem to be more focused on sex than romantic interactions. Examples of this lust include Reverend Hartman drooling over Kate Swift from afar in “The Strength of God.” It is also anti-romantic in the literary sense, as the novel focuses more on the citizens of Winesburg rather than the nature in the setting. The story is also separating itself from the past in a real-world context because the characters are anything but conventional. They act in ways that would have been deemed absolutely unacceptable in the recent past from when it was written.

On the surface “Hands,” a passage from Sherwood Anderson's “Winesburg, Ohio,” is a tale about Wing Biddlebaum's struggle in concealing his hands that he is ashamed of because of a misunderstanding that has scared him and how he feels about his hands, even under his new name and town where his hands are welcomed and admired he is unable to face them. However; digging deeper into this story the reader finds the recurring theme of concealing versus revealing that works to highlight the tension between balance and imbalance in this story. Anderson uses many recurring images like light and dark, old and young, dreams, and hands to show how Biddlebaum's struggle with his hands is symbolic of the imbalance in his life created because of concealment.

At the end of the story "Adventure," Anderson writes "began trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg (Anderson, Sherwood)." The themes of loneliness and isolation are expressed by describing the characters as grotesques. The grotesques are the people who have become obsessed with an idea or mannerism, such that, they have lost contact with their fellow Man. Anderson sets the course for the theme of isolation in the first three chapters, excluding "The Book of the Grotesque."

In Sherwood Anderson’s “Hands”, the main character, Wing Biddlebaum’s ambiguous actions (both physical and psychological) are often misinterpreted and get him into trouble due to his tendency to express himself through his hands. He is accused of homosexual pedophilia and gets shunned by the society. As Wing gets rejected from one society, he gets accepted by another. Yet, Wing’s past prevents him to fully engage with his surrounding, and he is only able to make a friendship with George Willard, a young reporter in town. Their relationship plays an important role as Wing’s interaction with George sparks a change in Wing, and serves to demonstrate that the supposedly sexual acts that Wing displays is neither concerning nor intriguing part of the story. Anderson’s effective use of diction and sentence structure creates a clash between Wing’s psychological state