The Vagueness of Words: The Plight of the “Grotesque”

Winesburg, Ohio, a short story cycle written by the American author Sherwood Anderson depicts a rather interesting portrait of an American Midwestern small town at the beginning of the twentieth century. Within this citizenry, Anderson draws attention to the distortion of each character in the book as a result of norms and traditions that led them into becoming “grotesques” as described in the prologue (The Book of the Grotesque). Among the exemplary stories written by Anderson, “Hands” and “Mother” are great at fulfilling the intention to reveal the inability of words to capture, express and explain the kinds of truth in life - underlying the main problem within human society.
In “Hands”, Anderson begins by describing explicitly Wing Biddlebaum as “a fat little old man”, which clearly captured the essence of being a grotesque. Grotesque as defined by the Oxford Dictionaries (2013) means that the object is odd and unnatural in shape, appearance or character. His grotesqueness is then amplified by the illustration of a group of youths and maidens coming home from work and one of the girls bully him by sarcastically commenting on his hair even though he was bald (9). His unconscious gesture of nervously fiddling his bare white forehead as mentioned by Anderson just shows how absurd he was in the eyes of society. This action in the beginning of the story proves that Wing Biddlebaum is an outlier, someone who is “forever frightened and beset by a ghostly band of doubts” and did not think of himself as “in any way a part of the life of the town where he had lived for twenty years” (27). However, through Wing Biddlebaum’s later conversations with the character George Willard, it can be seen that Wing tries hard to put his ideas into words and make others understand. Besides the short emotional outbursts like “you must try to forget all you have learned,” Wing particularly uses his overactive hands to deliver his message across to George and it unfortunately frightened the latter (13). Anderson notes that in the past, Wing Biddlebaum (then called Adolph Myers) was once a gentle schoolmaster which had been accused of molesting his student because in his excitement he would “stroke the shoulders” and “touch the hair” of his students. All these years after fleeing from the town in Pennsylvania, he still tries to keep his hands hidden, implicitly trying to shy away from the outside world. His past unfortunately just gave him the conclusive idea that he will forever be an outcast. To Anderson, the hands are one of the most important tools aside from language. It is needed to conduct human interactions but may at times be subject to misinterpretation through overuse. The denial of society by misreading the language of Wing’s hands led Wing to turn away from social life, and just like “the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird” (11); he was unable to achieve what he wanted- to communicate his true feelings.
The story “Mother” begins by Anderson giving an explicit portrayal of Elizabeth Willard- George Willard’s mother. He described her as “tall and gaunt” and “her face was marked with smallpox scars”(23). And similar to the story “Hands”, her physical appearances were rather odd and not generally accepted as a norm within society. Even her husband, Tom Willard, one that was slender and graceful, “thought of the old house and the woman who lived there with him as things defeated and done for” (23). The emphasis on the word ‘thing’ –grotesque- is now evident. With a bad marriage in hand and no longer fostered by love, Elizabeth’s predicament can be easily compared to Wing Biddlebaum’s feeling of imprisonment. In the past, Elizabeth used to “walked about with the travelling men of her father’s hotel,”(31) and beneath this impression, one may think that her experiences with these men were of a lustful nature because “it was always the same, beginning with kisses and ending, after strange wild emotions, with peace and then sobbing repentance” (31). Her restlessness made her eventually chose Tom Willard as a husband and which, she ultimately regrets. Just like the scene of the grey cat being chased away by the furious baker, Elizabeth tried hard to find the pleasure in life but could never get a hold of it. Now, she could only seek refuge within her son, George and focuses on giving all her love and interest on him. However, even when she desires to fulfill her dreams within him, dreams that she has been denied of during her lifetime, she still exists primarily within her own interior life, seeking God in everything (25). While she portrays an uninterested façade, deep down she strongly opposes whoever that threatens her son. Her inability to reveal her true feelings led George to say, “I suppose I can’t make you understand, but oh, I wish I could” (33). Her struggle to communicate love or understanding with George can also be seen when Anderson highlights, “she wanted to cry out with joy because of the words that had come from the lips of her son, but the expression of joy had become impossible to her” (33).
As we look closely, we could see that both Wing Biddlebaum and Elizabeth Willard blame themselves for their grotesqueness and their inability to convey the truth to society. Both characters feel responsible and blame themselves for being who they are. Wing Biddlebaum accepts the thought of others as the truth and naturally assume that it was his truth; Elizabeth Willard accepts her own failure in life and on top of Anderson’s description of her being ‘unacceptable’, she depicts herself as being “a meaningless drab figure” (25) and “as shabby as the hotel.”(27). Moreover, the creation of mood and atmosphere by Anderson fortifies his point on the incapability of the characters to communicate with others. In “Hands”, the whole setting of a “half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio,”(9) evidently signifies how he is living on the edge of society. An imagery of the “long field that had been seeded for clover” produced only yellow mustard weeds showed that Wing Biddlebaum’s life did not turn out as lucky (like the clover) as he expected it to be, albeit he had the best of intentions as a schoolmaster (9). Whereas in “Mother”, the story starts in the same way as “Hands” does. In the beginning, the hotel is described as being “disorderly looking” with “faded wall-paper and ragged carpets,” (23) implying that there were not many visitors that stayed in it. A hotel should be a place filled with people but as described, it was “now a mere ghost of what a hotel should be,”(23). And as Elizabeth Willard’s character is further illustrated by being a “tall and ghostly figure, moving slowly through the walls,” (23), it gives the whole idea of being in an eerie house considering that the hallways were only dimly lit with kerosene lamps (27). In addition, with the help of Elizabeth’s room being located “in an obscure corner” of the house, somewhat isolated from the rest, the silence which floats in the air between herself and her son in the room concludes the characters’ inability to have successful communication. In short, Anderson aims to epitomize the struggle of expression found in his grotesques. After analyzing both stories from the cycle and catching glimpses of the characters’ interior lives, one can say that Sherwood Anderson cleverly displays the two characters’ feelings of being repressed and their struggle to share the common bond of humanity. The two stories in general included the character George Willard, which through him we could then understand how Wing Biddlebaum and Elizabeth Willard felt at the moment in time- their inability to articulate their emotions. The shortcomings of both characters are the authors of the grotesques we see in society. Furthermore, he reaffirms his belief when he gave his characters the power to control their own destiny but their ignorance led them nowhere. Both stories seem to revolve around how precarious human beings view life and the general confusion in trying to understand life’s complexity. Looking back now, this dissection of characters- Wing Biddlebaum and Elizabeth Willard has given me tremendous insight into the enigma we call the human psyche.

Works Cited

Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Penguin, 1993. Print.

"Grotesque". Oxford Dictionaries. Oxford University Press, n.d. Web. 09 October 2013.