Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio seems to have made many readers very uncomfortable. I grew up and have returned to a town much like Winesburg, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The stereotype is that we’re hot beds of vicious gossip or coffee shops full of gleeful snickering over those who might not fit the mold.
Oh, I’m aware of the gossip, but many times it seems as much concern as gossip. I’ve seen people pay for “extra” school lunches; stock the food bank; start a fund at the bank for the medically fragile baby; or give a home to a kid so he could graduate while his parents struggled with addiction.
Of course, I’ve also seen bullies in action; observed the haunted eyes of the girl with a limp; or the hard-but-fragile shell around the kid who just might grow up gay. And, I couldn’t help noticing how many kids one might have called “different” left with haste, moving toward lives in towns where no one knew them or where they could start anew, live lives that they’d be able to define for themselves and not ones defined by petty people who judged them harshly.
So, which is it – care and concern – or gossip and judgement? Or is it all of those?
When I finished the stories, I felt sad. It occurred to me that I’d known people like those in the book. I worked with troubled youth and had learned that they and their families – like the residents of Winesburg -- each carried what I thought of as buckets of pain. Oh, they often looked okay -- they walked around, went to work, fixed meals, but they also were on edge, battered, fearful and seemed to live in constant fear of judgement or condemnation, or even of ending up alone. And I thought of all the buckets I’ve carried or have been carried by loved ones – mistakes or poor judgement or just plain the events of our lives.
Is knowing, seeing those buckets what makes readers of Winesburg so uncomfortable? It’s easy to dismiss – no, ignore -- people’s pain. Often, we ignore our own. It takes a lot of work to understand others, to avoid judgement, commit to facing our fears.
The German philosopher/historian Hannah Arendt (uh-RENDT) suggested that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Sherwood Anderson doesn’t allow us to look away. He asks us to make up our minds. He peers into the lives, goes behind the curtain, asks us to know.
In populous communities, one can ignore, one can assume and will probably never know the outcome of other people’s stories. But that’s not necessarily true for compassionate people in small towns or neighborhoods.
We often know one another whether by sight, or from the garden planted next to the garage, or even the back tax rolls. We hire kids to mow our lawn and attend graduation when they grow up. We wonder when we hear a siren or read of a hospitalization or accident in the newspaper, published weekly.
So, Anderson forces us to see and it makes us uncomfortable, makes us question how many buckets of pain walk past us each day. Do we judge others by not wondering? Not asking? Do we fail our neighbors when allow the bully to bully, accept bigotry, when we gossip or share a hurtful story?
In Winesburg, an old man advises that “you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices, must dare to be strong and courageous.” Myself, I’m going to think a lot about Hanna Arendt’s suggestion that we should make up our minds to be good rather than evil and I’m going to start with trying to understand those buckets of pain no matter how uncomfortable that makes me feel.
I’m Kathleen Holt in Cimarron Kansas.
