Wing gets his name from his uncontrollably restless hands that move incessantly like the wings of a caged bird. As a result, Wing was accused of molestation, run out of town, and fled to Winesburg under a new name.

Entitled “Hands,” it tells the story of Wing Biddlebaum, an eccentric, nervous man who lives on the outskirts of the town of Winesburg, Ohio. Biddlebaum’s horror stems from his past as a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania, where he was named Adolph Myers.

In Hands by Sherwood Anderson we have the theme of isolation, loneliness, alienation, fear, freedom and connection.

Wing attempts to live only by the truth of using his hands freely, and thus becomes a grotesque. This signifies the importance of the hands to Wing, who has seized them as his truth. Wing continues to use them freely in Winesburg and they become “his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame”(29).

The name “Wing” was given to him by “some obscure poet of the town” because the incessant fluttering of his hands suggested “the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird.” Terrified by his memories, Wing tries to hide his hands as much as possible, because “he felt that the hands must be to blame.” Wing’s day ends …

This was a very fast read at only 180-ish pages and I did enjoy it. The pacing was quick, as each story was only a few pages long.

Longing to escape inhibiting customs and conventions, his villagers are imprisoned by society’s demands and their own inability to distinguish between appearance and reality. The typical villagers, therefore, had become what Anderson called grotesques and he intended to name his book The Book of the Grotesque.

Short story cycle

Winesburg History

• Hostetler’s Farmall Tractor Museum. Features over 70 fully restored Farmall and International Harvester tractors.
• Winesburg Carriage Museum. Features carriages and wagons, sleighs.
• Alpine Cabinets.
• Eagle Song Studio.
• Four Corners Furniture.
• 4-Corner Woodworking.
• Gateway Gallery.

conceived as complementary parts of a whole, centered in the background of a single community.” The book consists of twenty-two stories, with the first story, “The Book of the Grotesque”, serving as an introduction.

The grotesques in Winesburg, Ohio are a group of small town people who clang to the traditional beliefs and could not adopt themselves to the transitional society. The major reasons for their grotesqueness lie not only in neurosis but also in the industrial alienation.

Winesburg, Ohio is a compilation of short tales written by Sherwood Anderson and published as a whole in 1919. The short tales formulate the common themes for the novel as follows: isolation and loneliness, discovery, inhibition, and cultural failure.