Winesburg, Ohio” Essay Question

Use at least two of the short stories from Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio and also incorporate at least one idea from the following scholarly article: “Holding On to the Sentimental in Winesburg Ohio” by Aaron Ritzenberg. Click here to read it. This is a 4 page essay assignment.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IG_p5dwoMjXwLdAI-zsMtKJ9g0lVkIjn/view

More on the scholarly article
The MLA citation for this article is:
Ritzenberg, Aaron. “Holding on to the Sentimental in Winesburg, Ohio.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 56 no. 3, 2010, p. 496-517. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mfs.2010.0019.

You do not have to go very in-depth into what this article is saying. If you feel uncomfortable, your use of the article could be as simple as the following sentence:
Much has been written about connections and “Winesburg Ohio.” Some of the scholars who have done this include Aaron Ritzenberg, Charles Modlin, and Edwin Fussell, to name a few (Ritzenberg). Like them, I will be examining the idea of connection in the short stories x and y of “Winesburg Ohio.”
I got those other scholars’ names in the above blue-boxed sentence by looking at Ritzenberg’s Works Cited page.
If You Are Up For A Challenge…
The thesis of this scholarly article by Aaron Ritzenberg is partly that Andersen is trying NOT to write something where people connect on an emotional level. He is trying to write the opposite — his characters run away from connections. Ritzenberg is also saying that even though Andersen tries this, he ultimately failes at it (497). Think about Elizabeth Willard and Doctor Reefy. Ritzenberg spends some time also talking about the history of industrialization to give you an historical backdrop for what Andersen is trying to do.
Also, when Ritzenberg writes the word “sentimental,” as in his title, you can think “emotional connection.”

**You will find that if you use the link above to get to the article, that I have added comments to the article to help you find the useful parts of it quickly for your own essay. I recommend that you read the beginning, my comments and connected text, and the end. THEN go back and skim for quotes on the parts that interest you. I wouldn’t try to read the whole thing in its entirety until I have done the above.

Assigned Short Stories from Winesburg OH
Choose at least 2:
“The Book of the Grotesque”
“Hands”
“Paper Pills”
“Mother”
“The Thinker”
“Death”

Notes on MLA
“The Book of The Grotesque”
For an In-text citation, do this: (“Grotesque”) [There are no page numbers at all.]
For your works cited page, list it alphabetically like this:

Anderson, Sherwood. “The Book of The Grotesque.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life. “Winesbug Ohio intro,” Susan Amper, Screencastomatic, 6 April 2016, screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cDf1Do14oy.

“Death”
For an In-text citation, do this: (“Death” 6) [Where 6 represents the page the idea is found on.]
For your works cited page, list it alphabetically like this:

Anderson, Sherwood. “Death” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, ebook, Electron Press, pp. 1-7.

“Hands”
For an In-text citation, do this: (“Hands” 4) [Where 4 represents the page the idea is found on.]
For your works cited page, list it alphabetically like this:

Anderson, Sherwood. “Hands.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, e-book, Electron Press, pp. 1-5.

“Mother”
For an In-text citation, do this: (“Mother” 19) [Where 19 represents the page the idea is found on.]
For your works cited page, list it alphabetically like this:

Anderson, Sherwood. “Mother.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life. Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories, The Library of America, 2012, pp. 18-25.

“Paper Pills”
For an In-text citation, do this: (“Paper” 2) [Where 2 represents the page the idea is found on.]
For your works cited page, list it alphabetically like this:

Anderson, Sherwood. “Paper Pills.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, ebook, Electron Press, pp. 1-2.

“The Thinker”
For an In-text citation, do this: (“Thinker” 5) [Where 5 represents the page the idea is found on.]
For your works cited page, list it alphabetically like this:

Anderson, Sherwood. “The Thinker.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, ebook, Electron Press, pp. 1-8.

The Works Cited Page Should Look Like This, Alphabetized, Just the stories you chose: 
Works Cited

Anderson, Sherwood. “The Book of The Grotesque.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life. “Winesbug Ohio intro,” Susan Amper, Screencastomatic, 6 April 2016, screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cDf1Do14oy.

Anderson, Sherwood. “Death” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, ebook, Electron Press, pp. 1-7.

Anderson, Sherwood. “Hands.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, e-book, Electron Press, pp. 1-5.

Anderson, Sherwood. “Mother.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life. Sherwood Anderson: Collected Stories, The Library of America, 2012, pp. 18-25.

Anderson, Sherwood. “Paper Pills.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, ebook, Electron Press, pp. 1-2.

Anderson, Sherwood. “The Thinker.” Winesburg Ohio: A Book of Tales of Small Town Life, ebook, Electron Press, pp. 1-8.

Ritzenberg, Aaron. “Holding on to the Sentimental in Winesburg, Ohio.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 56 no. 3, 2010, p. 496-517. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mfs.2010.0019 
As an example…
…let’s use the “Death” Study Guide Questions from last week:

1. Start with the idea. In this case the idea is connection.
● Think about people connecting in general.
● How would you define or imagine a connection between people in general?
● When do connections between people happen?
● When do connections between people NOT happen?
● Why do connections happen?
● Why DON’T connections happen?
● What is it like when a connection happens?

Now that you have thought about connections in general, look for scenes that seem to touch on these questions.

Let’s think about “Death” specifically, using the above questions, as an example of what you could do next:
● What was the basis of Elizabeth Willard’s and Dr. Reefy’s connection?
● What made it possible for these two to connect when others failed? (For example, what differences did you see in the way they interacted?)
● What is the key to two Elizabeth Willard and Dr. Reefy connecting?
● What specific thing (something someone said or did) was the trigger that allowed the two people to connect? Why was this the key?

2. The first way of getting ideas was to start with the idea and then look at the story. The second way is the opposite: look at the story—specific things—and ask what they say to you—what ideas they give you.

As Elizabeth talks to Doctor Reefy, she walks “around the office in a way Reefy had never seen anyone walk before.”
○ What is the importance of this?
○ What does it say to you?
○ What point might you use it to make?

When Dr. Reefy says, “You dear! You dear! You lovely dear!” what do you think he is thinking and feeling?
○ What makes you think that?

In the scenes between Elizabeth and Doctor Reefy, what do you notice?
● What do they say to you?

Write a statement on the theme of connection
After gathering your ideas, write one or more statements about connection as it is depicted in two or more stories from “Winesburg Ohio” as your thesis.

Check what you have written. If it is just a fact or only tells what actually happened, re-write it. It must be something you figured out, an interpretation, something that can be explained.