Winesburg, Ohio Character Analysis

Some may consider this question a little vague at first glance. The kind of vague that means when you look at it you have no idea what to think whatsoever. It’s a scary question. What is the Thing? There are so many ways it can be interpreted or explained. One person can go one way and everyone else another. Some people may arrive at the same answer but had two completely different ways of getting to it. But in order to get to a conclusion there must be a couple of constants. Truths must be understood in their entirety, both capital T and lowercase. The ideas of the tightrope of life also must be understood. More importantly what a grotesque is and how they lack the Thing. Then using some examples from Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, we can see
People who have let their Truth consume them. None of these people have the Thing. This might make it tough to continue to define the Thing but actually by looking at these characters we can actually begin to see some of their specific flaws and how those flaws are in some way the absence of the Thing and therefore we can come to a conclusion on what the Thing might be. Wash Williams. The perfect character to analyze. He’s actually a possible suspect of someone who had the Thing and then lost it. Wash Williams had a Truth. His Truth was that his wife was the love of his life and they were going to live happily ever after. What happens though? That Truth tragically fails. Oh it crashes and burns in the most horrific possible manner. He finds out shes been cheating on him with three other men. His reaction is calm at first. He sends her away to her mother and gives her all the money he has. So gracious of him. It looks like he might actually possess the Thing but no one has challenged his decision to detach from the Truth yet. Then the wife’s mother calls. Right there was his moment to show that he has the Thing. If he did he would have respectfully declined the invitation to be lured back into the Truth he once had. But instead in consumed him. He goes out to the mother’s house and he is asked to sit down and wait for his wife to come in. She does. Completely naked. This is the opposition he faces for detaching from his Truth. Full throttle stripping. Even people who have the Thing at this point are going to have a pretty livid reaction. Not necessarily violent but that is the path he chooses. See this where the Thing would have come into play nicely. As said by Wash Williams, “The longer I waited the more raw and tender I became. I thought that if she came in and just touched me with her hand I would perhaps faint away. I ached to forgive and forget (127).” This the language of a grotesque. It’s not the