Grotesque

For the psychoanalytic unit, we have been reading the book Winesburg, Ohio.  Written by Sherwood Anderson in the 1919, this book portrays certain figures from his unusual life.  Growing up in a small rural town, the Anderson family was began well off financially, but the father began drinking and they were forced to move from town to town.  The family finally settled in Clyde, Ohio, the town which Winesburg is based off of, where Sherwood Anderson left school at age 14 to take on odd jobs so he could help his family.  After returning to school and finishing his education, Anderson became a traveling salesman and married the daughter of a wealthy businessman.  The couple had three kids together before Anderson experienced a nervous breakdown and eventually walked away from his family and everything he had known to become a novelist.  Anderson utilized experiences from his unique life to write stories using Freudian theory describing the stories behind grotesques, characters that are ugly in a way that represent society's ugliness.

Each grotesque displays is characterized by a truth, which is the flaw that troubles the grotesque.  In Hands, the grotesque, Wing Biddlebaum, is a man that lives on the outside of town and is well known for his exceptional berry picking skills.  Wing Biddlebaum lives in Winesburg for 20 years in isolation for an incident that scarred him forever.  Before he moved to Winesburg, Wing was a school teacher in a town in Pennsylvania, who went by the name Adolph Myers.  Described as a man who "was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth," Adolph Myers was beloved by all of his students for his gentle and loving charisma.  After school, Adolph would caress his touch his students so that he could manifest dreams inside of them.  One night, a student had a nightmare where the teacher did "unspeakable things" to the student, and the town evantually formed a mob against the teacher.  Adolph Myers managed to escape the mob, however, when he came to Winesburg, he formed a complete disassociation with his hands.  For the next twenty years, Adolph Myers lived in isolation in Winesburg and was afraid out his hands.  At the end of the story, Adolph eats a few bread crumbs in a manner that could be mistaken for someone praying the rosary.  This implies that he feels like he has sinned and has subconscious guilt for the wrong reason.  From his traumatic experience, Adolph Myers forms a truth of the idea that trying to foster the learning of others is somehow wrong, and that drives him to isolation from society.