Throughout Winesburg, Ohio, abandonment is repeatedly mentioned. Enoch, Alice and Wash are all abandoned. Usually, it leads the character to his eventual doom. It is at the center of the plot in each story. So, the question arises: why? Why are is it so important? What does it do? The answer is that abandonment is the source of a character's ruin.
Look at Enoch Robinson, for example. He lived in a closed off farmhouse, and was similarly closed off, himself. Once he moves, he is able to open up to passion. He is passionate about his work, but he is unable to communicate his passion. His inability forces him to shut himself off, again. Instead of relying on others, he turns inwards. He creates people with whom to interact. His room becomes the source of his passion, full of those who support him. Out of nowhere, along comes a woman. The narrator says she lives in the room across the hall. The only problem with this is that her room is never shown. Every encounter takes place in Enoch's room, causing readers to wonder if she is also a figment of his imagination. Either way, she offers him a chance to be a better person. If he can connect with her, he could encounter love. Instead, he is unable to understand her. He stomps and shouts until, finally, she leaves him. This single act of abandonment tears him apart. His people leave with her. He is left alone. He loses his passion, all because of her.
Wash Williams is similarly abandoned. He gave everything he had. He married a woman; looking back, he realizes she was dead inside. He would have done anything to make her happy. He recounts their time spent gardening. The narrator references him as crawling at her feet, emphasizing Wash's love for his wife. He was pure right up until they were married, because he was virginal. She takes that from him. She takes his innocence. He forces her to leave, so in a physical or literal sense, she doesn't abandon him. However, she does abandon him emotionally. He loves her, but she has three other lovers to visit. She betrays him. In this betrayal, she leaves him emotionally abandoned. She doesn't reciprocate his love for her. She takes it for granted. This leaves Wash alone to hate the world. He pities men who will, like himself, be duped by a woman. He hates woman since they leave. They abandon, therefore he hates them.
In "Adventure", it isn't the woman doing the abandoning; it is the man. Ned claims to love Alice. He confesses his feelings for her and promises to return. However, as years pass, he never does. Alice, is abandoned by him. He ceases to care for her. It takes her a long time to realize that, but when she does, she goes crazy. She runs naked through the streets and begins to become emotionally attached to inanimate objects. Overall, she tries to replace Ned without actually replacing him. He leaves her broken while meeting new women in the city. His abandonment of her leaves her broken down and miserable.
The most interesting part of the novel is Helen. She loves George, and they share a moment together. Both of them mature and become sophisticated. She calls for him in the night when she can't deal with her professor any longer. She becomes emotionally attached. He, on the other hand, leaves without saying goodbye; he abandons her.
Wow so I thought I posted this already but it has just been sitting in my google docs for a week. Sorry :(
ReplyDeleteI did my paper on the word lonely and what caused Enoch and a couple of other people to become grotesque, so I have a few different ideas about this, but I’ll just focus in on Enoch for this post. It seems as if you are saying that each grotesque’s abandonment was the sole reason that they became grotesques. While this is a valid opinion, I think that there is more to it. Many times in grotesques’ lives there is an outside force that makes the first push into the descent into grotesquity, but then it is followed by a decision by the grotesque to stay that way, whether it is a conscious decision or not varies. Either way they decide to remain grotesque, so they seal their own fate. With Enoch, you say that his inability to express his passion is what causes his isolation. I think it happened a little differently and it was not so straight forward. He was not racking on himself for being unable to get his point across, he was angry at his art ‘friends’ for being unable to see the ‘actual meaning’ of his artwork. These people were throwing out ideas that he thought were incorrect or invalid and this made him extremely uncomfortable and it even scared him a bit, so he kicked everyone out and locked his doors to protect himself, not to punish himself. He was frightened by the fact that they could not see what he was seeing. You say that he relies on himself instead of on others, but you make it seem like a bad decision. These other people did not care for him at all. In fact, he probably seemed very strange to them, so they were probably only his friends because they pitied him. So why would he choose to trust and lean on people who did not truly like him? It seems natural to me for him to close himself off, although it was a bit overboard with the locking of the doors. He literally had no friends, so he only had himself to support him. This isolation is what spawned his imaginary people. He is so alone that he has to imagine that people like him and support him and that is like the saddest thing I have ever heard of. The woman that comes in is not the cause of all of Enoch’s trouble. In the end she does not abandon him, he screams at her and yells at her, forcing her to leave him. He did not want her to be there and it is not like she stole all of the people on purpose. I think all of his people left with her because Enoch was so embarrassed about what had happened. In this situation I think he was unconsciously punishing himself for being a freak. Basically the woman did not do anything to Enoch, Enoch caused all of the bad stuff at the end to happen to himself.