The concept of grotesqueness in Sherwood Anderson's stories

Ю.Д. Лукманова ФГПОУ ВПО «БГПУ им. М. Акмуллы» (г.Уфа)

THE CONCEPT OF GROTESQUENESS IN THE SHERWOOD ANDERSON’S STORIES

Sherwood Anderson - the 20th century famous writer – came out as a genuine pioneer who assimilated the range of problems caused by the new stage

of the America’s social development for he managed to reflect very topical phenomena and processes as the collapse of free farm America, the malignancy of the material success credo, estrangement of a person who loses irrevocably all his spiritual values in the process of industrial capitalistic development. As M. Koreneva observed, a tragedy of existence, which turns people into grotesques, is generated by the whole social progress of the country, where individualism is fraught with consequences, dangerous for the personal growth. She thinks that Winesburg’s characters are people who are crying for mercy because they are incapable to resist the hostile reality. This fact is dramatically showed in the Anderson’s short stories through the use of different lexical and syntactic stylistic means. In this study we’ll try to understand how the author conveys his ideas to the reader through the usage of stylistic devices. Let us consider the story ‘Paper Pills’ as an example of Sherwood Anderson’s stories. 

The story begins with the description of the protagonist- the old man with a white beard and a huge nose. The exaggeration ‘the knuckles of the doctor’s hands were extraordinary large’ and the prolong simile ‘when the hands were closed they looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods’ gives the impression there was some secret related with his hands. He was a dentist and in some way it explains why they looked so large and strong.

   The metaphor ‘seeds of something very fine’ shows that Doctor Reefy (that was his name) is a very sensitive and acquisitive person because even being forgotten by the whole city he manages to keep something good inside; may be warm memories about his wife. ‘He worked ceaselessly, building up something that he himself destroyed. Little pyramids of truth he erected and after erecting knocked them down again’. The antitheses ‘building up’ and ‘destroying, ‘erecting’ and ‘knocking down’ reveal the idea of tragedy of his soul. We can feel that he is not satisfied with his life; something tortures him inside, something he doesn’t get or lose.

 Turning to the description of his courting of the tall dark girl the narrator compares their story with the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. Then he depicts how these apples are picked in the autumn and shipped to the cities. Everyone wants these beautiful apples, but not the gnarled ones that were left on the tree. With these gnarled apples Dr’s Reefy’s hands are compared again. This simile shows very vividly that he in some way is different from other people, that he has some feature that most people consider repulsive.

People seem lifeless in this sad story. The zeugma ‘apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture and people’ make me think they are like inanimate objects, like toys that can’t live and think but just move automatically. And this fact makes the relations between the Doctor and the tall dark girl even more mysterious and sophisticated as if they were the only people able to feel and love amid this dead city. There is one very prominent symbol in this story – paper pills that Dr. Reefy gather in his pockets. The repetition of the word ‘thoughts’, which is written on these papers, gives the idea that Dr. Reefy has nobody to talk to to express his thoughts. The metaphor ‘he formed the truth that arose gigantic in his mind, the truth clouded the world’ which proceeds in the anticlimax ‘it became terrible and then faded way’ emphasizes this idea and shows, that people don’t know the truth, that they are blind like puppies.

Coming to the description of the tall dark girl one would pay attention that the author doesn’t name her. It makes her like a ghost which appeares for a period of time and then is lost. The exaggeration ‘train of suitors’ implies the idea that all of them may be categorized into two types which are opposed to each other. The description of their characters is the entire antithesis. One man has white hands while the other one has black hair, one tells her continually about virginity, the other always manages to get her into the darkness and kiss her. When she comes to the doctor being pregnant he ‘seemed to know what had happened to her’. With these words S. Anderson underlines how deep doctor Reefy understands her. And further: ‘after the tall dark girl came to know him it seemed to her that she never wanted to leave him again’. It also strengthens the idea of their deep mutual understanding.

  In the passage where the author describes the episode of how Doctor Reefy pulls the teeth of a woman he paints a very vivid contrast based on the antithesis: ‘the blood ran down on the woman’s white dress’. But the tall dark girl doesn’t pay attention which proves she is engrossed into her feelings and fails to notice anything. In the very end Anderson pictures the tall dark girl and the doctor together. The repeated metaphor ‘sweetness of the twisted apples’ produces the impression that this girl manages to love the doctor , that she finds something in him that other people can’t see. And the doctor is happy because at last he has someone whom he can read his thoughts to. But with the last sentence ‘after he had red them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls’ the author gives a hint he doesn’t fully believe in his thoughts or isn’t understood by this woman so that the papers (read: thoughts) are becoming hard round balls hanging like a burden in his soul. I think it was his inner tragedy.

Summing up, we should point out that the whole story is based on the antithesis – it can be found throughout the whole text and every time it serves to create a bright colorful contrast. In itself the contrast creates the grotesqueness of the situations and the protagonist himself. R.I.Rosina notes that the word ‘grotesque’ serves as the general characteristic of the personages, their destinies and those events or soul conditions, which are in the centre of the narration. We can find the semantic relation of this word with the epithets ‘gnarled’ and ‘twisted’ apples. The named lexical stylistic devices, which are mostly of negative connotation, serve to create the absurdness, the grotesqueness of the situations and people. The world seems so unjust towards him so that the reader feels sorry for him. Some specific features that are so regular of him - estrangement, needlessness, oppression - press him down and act as his incarnation. It seems that it’s not the man, but the embodiment of those features, those features themselves. Therefore his inner world seems split and ruined; and the two main symbols – paper pills with his thoughts written on them and twisted gnarled apples – also support this idea.

ЛИТЕРАТУРА

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