Broken Silence

A reminiscence on Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio...

The headlines in Ohio’s small-town papers spoke of a democracy on the brink of chaos: “Democrats Say Effort Being Made to Steal the Election” (Portsmouth Daily Times); “Final Result of Election Still Hangs in the Balance” (Xenia Daily Gazette); “Talk of Election Being Thrown into the Hands of Congress” (Butler County Democrat). We read these headlines and remember the battle for Ohio, 2004, when George W. Bush lost in the cities but won by more than 149,000 votes in small towns, thus ensuring his victory in the national election. It was the latest microcosm of a polarized America: white against black, religious against secular, urban against rural, and a near-stalemate that (again) exposed the deep chasm between red-voting towns and blue-voting cities.

However, these headlines are not from 2004; they are from 1916, the year Woodrow Wilson edged Charles Evans Hughes by just 3% of the votes, and the year Sherwood Anderson began publishing the series of stories that eventually became his masterwork, Winesburg, Ohio.

In 1916, as in 2004, America was at war, and the party that had gotten the country into war had also won re-election. Anderson was living at the time in what he described as “a cheap room in a Chicago rooming house,” and from there, he gave the world one of its earliest truly candid views of the realities of small-town American life. A week after the 1916 election, Anderson wrote to Waldo Frank, his friend and editor, “It is my own idea that when these studies are published in book form, they will suggest the real environment out of which present-day American youth is coming.” Clearly, he knew what he was doing. But he never could have known how relevant his characters’ joys, passions, anxieties, and abasements would still be among the social and political chasms of the early 21st century.

In a 1984 Harper’s essay, John Updike astutely writes that the Winesburg stories portray characters who “…walk otherwise isolated toward some inexpressible denouement of private revelation.” He continues:

Inexpressiveness, indeed, is what is above all expressed: the characters, often, talk only to George Willard [the central protagonist], and then only once; their attempts to talk with one another tend to culminate in a comedy of tongue-tied silence.

Indeed, Anderson’s characters repeatedly come to the brink of intimacy, only to founder under their own inhibitions. In “Adventure,” Alice Hindman’s pent-up sexual desires erupt in a mad, naked dash into the rainy night that ends in silence and shame. In “The Strength of God” and “The Teacher,” the passions of another young woman, Kate Swift, are stunted as she ends up exposed, naked and kneeling on her bed in prayer. And in “Mother” and “Death,” Elizabeth Willard, George’s mother, desperate for her son to escape Winesburg, is unable to speak her heart to him and ends up dying in silence.

Men, too, both old and young, fail to find expression. Wing Biddlebaum, in “Hands,” churns under the silence of an accused (and perhaps guilty) child molester. In “The Philosopher,” Doctor Parcival, who is haunted by memories of his early years, seeks comfort in writing but fails at it, and in the end begs George Willard, “…perhaps you will be able to write the book that I may never get written.” And Seth Richmond, in “The Thinker,” has intelligence, ambition, and determination, but no facility for words. He rails against the useless talk of others, saying in the end, “I’ll do something, get into some kind of work where talk don’t count….I just want to work and keep quiet.”

From these portrayals of small-town reticence in the 1890s, fast-forward fifty years: The country wins decisively in two world wars and parlays those victories into military and economic dominance. Fast-forward twenty more years, and in the cities, a mood of self-examination takes hold, and in the South, a thirst for justice. Cultural upheaval and movement toward racial, economic, and sexual equality rise up, and yet hundreds of Winesburgs still cling to their silence. It is then that a new wave of charismatics arrives to incite them. Jerry Falwell transforms the “silent majority” into the self-dubbed Moral Majority. Christianity becomes big business as megachurches move in alongside big box stores. And the media replaces the steady and informative voices of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and John Chancellor with the more lucrative cable news shout-fests of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

And the real citizens all over the land who are portrayed so faithfully in Winesburg, Ohio are given a voice that waves its fists at TV screens and speaks loudly at the polls.

But Anderson’s lessons, we know, are broader and more essential: Life is strange, he shows us; life is brutal, life will slash at your emotions, and though the scabs will peel, the scars left behind will serve as constant reminders. And through it all, the town itself will always be a force: it is a refuge to some, a prison to others, but to most, it is both. For those like George Willard and his creator, who choose to leave, the small town nonetheless stays with them. It is indelible and precious. And whether we vote blue or red, whether we are part of a Winesburg world or just curious readers looking in, a return trip to Winesburg, Ohio in this momentous time offers us a real chance at greater understanding.