Lonely grotesques of winesburg-sherwood anderson Dr Mohan B.*, Srikala B.** *Associate Professor in English, S.V. College of Engineering and Technology, Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, India **Mentor in English, APIIIT, Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies, R.K Valley, Idupulapaya, Kadapa Dt, Andhra Pradesh, India Online published on 11 July, 2017. Abstract Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) was a prolific, profound, provocative and perceptive writer of short stories. Further, it is acknowledged that he “remained a profound, provocative and perceptive writer to the end, and that he has much to say” to the present time. The short story became the most popular of fictional forms at the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in America. Frank O Connor, who had an acute sense of national values, was led on to declare way back in 1963 that “the Americans have handled the short story so wonderfully that one can say that it is a national art form”. “Anderson reshaped the American short story, making it his own, and at the same time prepared the ground work for the revolutionary writers who would follow them”. The most impressive and the most recurrent theme of Anderson which appears virtually in all his works and forms their ground bass is human loneliness and isolation and all the feelings that accompany it. Anderson explores this theme with particular reference to the American society of his times. Philosophers, men if religion and social scientists have been deeply concerned with this phenomenon and are trying to trace its root cause and discover, if possible remedies for it in the modern world. Loneliness is the most striking symptom of the malaise afflicting man in the contemporary world. It is a sickness, which is mental and spiritual rather than physical. Gregarious as man is by instinct, he feels deeply the need to be related to the outside world, his family, his community or society and the world at large. Surrender, one of the parts of the larger tale Godliness in Winesburg, Ohio, who illustrates the points made. It is a story of misunderstanding and loneliness. All the protagonists are, as noted already, lonely, isolated, alienated, defeated and frustrated persons, their lives distorted, fragmented and broken, their emotional hunger, longing for love, communion, and fulfillment ungratified. They feel estranged from the basic sources of emotional sustenance, living as they do in a claustrophobic atmosphere. However, as human beings they are indeed like the twisted and gnarled apples rejected, but whose delicious sweetness is gathered at the side. Top |