Sherwood Anderson - Winesburg, Ohio

BIOGRAPHY

Sherwood Anderson is an American novelist who was born in 1876 Ohio and died 1941. He’s best known for his short stories, including the book Winesburg, Ohio. The scene takes place in Ohio and talks about small people, the most part of time who is frustrated, unhappy in their lives.

He influenced several major figures of American literature, including Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell.

He was born into a poor rural family. His father was an unrepentant storyteller of imaginary stories about his own life. He had to interrupt his studies at the age of fourteen. He was fighting in Cuba in the Spanish-American War. After his discharge, he worked in a factory in a small town in Ohio. Then, he decided to work in an advertising agency. That’s here that he became passionate by literature. He decided to leave for Chicago and work as journalist. His first success was in 1919.

Poor White is his most famous novel, but another famous work is Winesburg, Ohio, which is a short story cycle that he wrote in 1919; The cycle consists of twenty-two short stories. The major themes of the book largely concern the interaction between the individual citizens of Winesburg and the world around them. As each of the book's stories focuses primarily on one character.

The story of Reverend Curtis Hartman, one of the most powerful characters in the book, is based on irony. Here, the irony is based on contrast, whether it be between what is said and what is meant, what he preachs and what he does.

The most obvious ironic contrast in is between appearance and reality. For example, Curtis Hartman, the forty-year-old pastor of the elite Winesburg Presbyterian Church, seems to be a refined scholar. He and his wife are respected by the community; they are apparently happy and above reproach. He’s respected pillar of society but during the story, he turns out to be a peeping tom. On the other hand, Kate Swift, the woman he watched, seems to him to be a fast or sinful woman. However, she’s really a good person and a conscientious teacher. Strangely enough, after his first sight of Kate Swift and his resulting sexual desires, the minister preaches an unusually powerful sermon. As in "Godliness," appearance is quite unlike reality and results are quite different from expectations. He’s very hypocritical because he’s saying “do what I say but not what I do”. There is even a sermon where he says “I have been tempted and I have surrendered to temptation”, whereas few lines earlier, we saw that he made a hole in the coin of the window, especially to be able to see easier Kate Swift; and we see good that he yields to temptation.

There is also another irony with the room. In this spot where the minister seems safest from the world's sins, he is tempted. When the minister breaks out a little piece of the window so he can continue to look into Kate's room, the piece of glass broken out just nips off the bare heel of the boy. Anderson wants to show us how much the man can be weak.

Finally, there is another passage which is full of irony. This is when Reverend Hartman has his "vision" and breaks out the whole window. On this particular night, the minister watches Kate, who throws herself naked on the bed. After, she begins to pray, looking in the lamplight like the boy in the

...