Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio: The Individual in the Village Dr ...

Damascus University Journal, Vol.٢٠, No. (١+٢), ٢٠٠٤
Kutrieh
Ahmad Ramez
little things that make his characters cognizant of their being alive, when
they realize the enormous possibilities and potentials of the moment,
potential that remain elusive and beyond their reach, yet they feel the
vibrancy of life. This vibrancy makes even less fulfilled because of their
inability to do anything with their feelings and ideas. It may seem at first
that Anderson is providing simple descriptions of his hometown. The
reader soon realizes that the descriptions are most often non-specific and
could be descriptions of any small midwestern town or village. The
descriptions serve also to dramatize the moment making the past and the
future irrelevant. These time disconnected moments, show time frozen
and heighten the readers' sense of these moments. Anderson keeps
presenting the significant moments to show that the life that matters is the
present. It is living, not having lived, that matters. His narrative never
varies from dwelling on the moments of life the characters experience.
Every story is constructed around these moments and descriptions. For
example, in "The Thinker," Seth walks with Helen White under the trees.
The reader is told,
Heavy clouds had drifted across the face of the
moon, and before them in the deep twilight went
a man with a short ladder upon his shoulder.
Hurrying forward, the man stopped at the street
crossing and, putting the ladder against the
wooden lamp-post, lighted the village lights so
that their way was half lighted, half darkened, by
the lamps and by the deepening shadows cast by
the low branched trees. In the tops of the trees
the wind began to play, disturbing the sleeping
birds so that they flew about calling plaintively.
In the lighted space before one of the lamps, two
bats wheeled and circled, pursuing the gathering
swarm of night flies. (١٦٧)
In "Sophistication," George and Helen White go to the grandstand of
the fair grounds. The narrator informs us that the two are sitting there at
that lonely place, and then moves on to say,
In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out
into the long night of late fall. Farm horses
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