Expressionism In Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio
Expressionism in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio
According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, expressionism is “a 20th-c movement in art, literature...seeking to give symbolic, objective expression to inner experience.” In his essay, “Anderson’s Expressionist Art,” David Stouck writes,
The Winesburg stories accumulate power from those exaggerated, stylized gestures by which a character is revealed or through which a scream of suffering is made to be heard. “Expressionism” is the formal term especially suitable to describing Anderson’s art, because in common with the dramatist and painters in that period, Anderson made it his goal to give outward expression to the intense private feelings of both the artist and the characters he created. (212)
Anderson uses over the top acts committed by the characters in the town of Winesburg to express the deep feelings of his characters. He paints a picture showing the negative results his characters experience because …show more content…
He left home at eighteen in hopes of becoming a Presbyterian minister after college. When his four older brothers were killed during the Civil War, he was called home to take over the family farm. Jesse was a slight man, but he was determined and had a burning passion within him that demanded success. In “Godliness,” Jesse prays to God, “‘I am a new kind of man come into possession of these fields,…Look upon me, O God, and Thou also upon my neighbors…O God, create in me another Jesse, like the one of old, to be the father of sons who shall be rulers!’” (33-34). Jesse is expressing religious fanaticism in his desire for God to acknowledge him. He asks God to look upon him and his neighbors because he believes he is superior to other men. Bentley’s inner experiences lead him to believe that God must bless everything he puts his hands to (like Old Testament Patriarchs) and that God will give him sons who will be leaders in
According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, expressionism is “a 20th-c movement in art, literature...seeking to give symbolic, objective expression to inner experience.” In his essay, “Anderson’s Expressionist Art,” David Stouck writes,
The Winesburg stories accumulate power from those exaggerated, stylized gestures by which a character is revealed or through which a scream of suffering is made to be heard. “Expressionism” is the formal term especially suitable to describing Anderson’s art, because in common with the dramatist and painters in that period, Anderson made it his goal to give outward expression to the intense private feelings of both the artist and the characters he created. (212)
Anderson uses over the top acts committed by the characters in the town of Winesburg to express the deep feelings of his characters. He paints a picture showing the negative results his characters experience because …show more content…
He left home at eighteen in hopes of becoming a Presbyterian minister after college. When his four older brothers were killed during the Civil War, he was called home to take over the family farm. Jesse was a slight man, but he was determined and had a burning passion within him that demanded success. In “Godliness,” Jesse prays to God, “‘I am a new kind of man come into possession of these fields,…Look upon me, O God, and Thou also upon my neighbors…O God, create in me another Jesse, like the one of old, to be the father of sons who shall be rulers!’” (33-34). Jesse is expressing religious fanaticism in his desire for God to acknowledge him. He asks God to look upon him and his neighbors because he believes he is superior to other men. Bentley’s inner experiences lead him to believe that God must bless everything he puts his hands to (like Old Testament Patriarchs) and that God will give him sons who will be leaders in