Winesburg, Ohio: Novel or Short Story?

Throughout the lonesome pages of Sherwood Anderson’s gripping work, Winesburg, Ohio, the reader is introduced to a slew of individual and most often unrelated characters that leave their existence up to the reader to define. Often times, Anderson leaves the lesson that each independent character represents to the reader to interpret as was the case with Enoch Robinson and his affair with the city and the love it brings. Anderson’s style of writing is cogent with the definition of a collection of short story and is further supported by his use of plain syntax and simple diction. For some, the tales of Winesburg are blissfully glazed with a deeper layer of meaning to which become evident to the erudite thinker, and to others a simple collection of simple stories. Within this contrast, the conception of a short story is at hand for it is up to the reader to break down each situation and its literal and philosophical implications it has on the plot and its movement.

While novels and short stories sometimes seem to mix together, the major factual distinction between the two rests in the plot and the intimacy of the relationship between reader and character[s] that help drive it. As novels tend to lean closer to the aforesaid, short stories rely less on the structural integrity of the plot, and more so on independent tales of a complex didactic nature that stimulate the reader to form his own personal plot and derive its importance from the disclosed tale. Short stories such as those of Winesburg, Ohio focus less on an intricate plot executed by cunning and gregarious individuals to the likes of Eric Larson’s Devil in the White City, and more on the rigidness of the current situation much like the pages of “Death” in Winesburg which concentrate on George’s coming of age, and the maturation he has went though as he came to terms with his mothers passing.

As was suggested before, Anderson’s usage of both simple syntax and diction provide sound evidence for Winesburg to be classified as a compilation of short stories. Sentences such as; “George Willard tramped about in the rain, and he was glad that it rained. He felt that way”, and, “The farmhouse was painted brown” each expel the deep rooted sense of nothingness that in a way embody everything the theme of Winesburg, Ohio is tries to convey: the lonesomeness and “frustration” of the separation of rural town life. Anderson’s dry and insipid word choice [diction]