Hello, Radio Readers. I’m Jane Holwerda from Dodge City, Kansas, for our Fall 2022 Read: Rural Life: Revisited. Sad news, friends. We are about to wrap up Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, a novel set in a small rural town around the early 1900s. We’ve accompanied the central character, “young George Willard,” on his evening perambulations and interactions, learning the sad and often disturbing stories of those who live in Winesburg. As we turn the final pages, young Willard decides to leave town.
For this significant change in character, we might expect some brouhaha, a parade, maybe. The guy is leaving home. He’s seeking new life and livelihoods. Will his departure be heralded with a blast from a clarion? Uh. No. A dozen townspeople see him off at the train station but talk mostly of themselves, as if George’s leaving is of little importance. Likewise, the train conductor takes young Willard’s ticket, unimpressed, for he has, as Anderson writes, “seen a thousand George Willards go out of their towns to the cities. It was a commonplace enough incident.” Once on the train, Willard frets about money, worries that in the city he will seem naïve and green. Overall, his departure is small-scale and without drama; his future is uncertain and unplanned.
The final sentence of the final chapter doesn’t offer us much hope for George Willard. “Winesburg,” Anderson tell us, “had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.” I’d feel better about young George’s future if he were described as carving or sculpting his future, as if he were actively plumbing his depths to bring forth something three-dimensional, something solid.
Yet, he is headed west. West, the direction long symbolic in American mythology of beginnings and opportunities. But not to uncharted territories or distant frontiers, he is no explorer. He’s headed to a city a few hours away, easy to maintain communication by post, telegraph, and in a few more years by telephone. If young George Willard were amongst us today, he could purchase technologies and access to work and study remotely without leaving home. Would he so choose? Or is it about freeing himself from the insularity of his hometown, about being free to reformulate himself? But will he?
Commonly accepted is the idea that in writing about George Willard, Sherwood Anderson was writing about himself. In letters and interviews, Anderson iterated that the small rural town of his youth had been a good place to be from even as he rarely returned to it. It’s been noted that while successful as a writer, he struggled to acclimate in his professional and personal lives.
Would we argue Anderson could have realized success and happiness had he never left his small rural home town or had returned to it? If we argue that leaving rural home towns is conducive to well-being, is maybe even an inevitable rite of passage, what beliefs do we reveal about rural living?
For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Jane Holwerda, from Dodge City KS.
