However, George’s mother fails to communicate her dying wish to George-that he make use of money she has hidden in the plaster wall at the foot of her bed-and Helen White fails to say goodbye to George at the railway station.
In a few instances, male and female characters achieve temporary communication: George’s mother with her male doctor George with Helen Foster, the girl he loves. Finally, many male characters also express disappointment about their relationships with women. However, two female characters without a male partner, Louise Trunnion and Kate Swift, are also disappointed. These women include George’s mother as well as Louise Bentley. Other realizations by the characters include repeated instances of women being disappointed by men, by sex and sexuality, by romantic relationships, and by marriage. George Willard, a young man who figures in many of the stories, wants to be a writer. “The Book of the Grotesque” relates the dream an old writer had about the transformation of truths and people into grotesques. One link is the presence of writers among the characters.
Because Winesburg, Ohio, is of the genre of a short-story cycle, the stories within it are bound to each other by many similarities, repetitions, and links. The stories, each focusing on a particular resident, comprise a mini-population or representation of the town itself. Winesburg, Ohio, is a cycle comprising 21 short stories plus one prefatory story, “The Book of the Grotesque.” That initial story introduces the concept that runs through the rest of the stories: People dominated by one idea become grotesque, even if that one idea is true. ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Winesburg, Ohio (1919)
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