Growing Up, an Analysis of Isolation in Winesburg, Ohio

The back cover to the Viking Critical Library Edition of 'Winesburg, Ohio' by Sherwood Anderson reads: "'Winesburg, Ohio' is Sherwood Anderson's 1919 volume of interconnected stories about an ordinary small town whose citizens struggle with extraordinary dreams and grotesque disappointments" (Back cover; Viking Critical Library Edition of 'Winesburg, Ohio' by Sherwood Anderson, edited by John H. Ferres, Viking Press, 1996). The novel by the North-American writer is a collection of short stories, about the life, emotions and feelings of the townspeople of a fictional 1890s town. Emotions that sustain throughout the whole of 'Winesburg, Ohio' are isolation and loneliness, "particularly as these emotions take their source from failure of affection or of creative expression" (Edwin Fussell,'Winesburg, Ohio': Art and Isolation; The Achievement of Sherwood Anderson edited by Ray Lewis White, Chapel Hill Books, 1966). Furthermore an unknown author states that "The figures of 'Winesburg, Ohio' usually personify a condition of psychic deformity which is the consequence of some crucial failure in their lives. Misogyny, inarticulateness, frigidity, God-infatuation, homosexuality, drunkenness - these are symptoms of their recoil from the regularities of human intercourse" (unknown author, http://www.studynet.com/novels/winesburg/isolation/).…