Watch Your Hands: An Analysis of the Grotesque in Sherwood Anderson’s​ Winesburg, Ohio Anonymous 12th Grade

Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio is a composite novel which depicts the lives of emotionally struggling men and women in a fictional town of Winesburg. Each story follows characters who are misunderstood, lonely, and experiencing estrangement from society. The characters lack proper human connection and have to face the fact that they are isolated in their own community. In short, Anderson crafts an upsetting place filled with suffering characters who are known as grotesques. As Irving Howe explains in his introduction to Winesburg, Ohio, grotesques possess certain characteristics such as their inability to articulate, physical deformity, and above all, the “‘truth’ which so dominates and distorts their entire being.” According to Howe, they are the “shades of humanity” and “shards of life.” An archetypal example of a grotesque is Wing Biddlebaum in “Hands,” who embodies the whole notion and represents each characteristic of an “emotional cripple” (Irving Howe) with his complete disconnect from the community.

Wing Biddlebaum’s fear of human connection and belief that he is not a part of Winesburg portray a key characteristic of his grotesqueness. As Anderson explains in the beginning of “Hands,” Wing “did not think of...