The Carnival Features Of Winesburg, Ohio

Sherwood Anderson has been considered as one of the pathfinders of American modern literature, occupying a particularly important position in the history of American literature. Owing to its innovative creation form, simple language, grotesque style and exaggerated description, his masterpiece, Winesburg, Ohio, establishes for him a high prestige in American literature. Winesburg, Ohio vividly depicts a group of people who are eager for love and freedom but lack of communication, restricted by tradition, and distorted by materialism. Therefore, it expresses their strong dissatisfaction with reality, their severe fight against industrial civilization, as well as anxious dream for peaceful and harmonious life. In the novel, there are abundant comic and grotesque figures, turbulent town events, and profound spirit of revolt and reform. On the basis of Bakhtin’s carnival theory, the thesis attempts to explore the carnival features of Winesburg, Ohio.Based on the related literature review at home and abroad, the thesis first elaborately presents the motivation and significance of the research, and makes a general introduction to the carnival theory. Chapter One aims at analyzing the carnival collective in the novel. The novel depicts a group of people, who are oppressed by industrialism and traditional morals, including some individual grotesques, such as the lonely clown, Biddlebaum, the self-alienated fool, Doctor Reefy, and the madwoman, Alice, as well as some paired images which imply the hidden duality of them, such as naive Louise and sophisticated Belle, loyal Wash and his libertine wife, and calm Ray and willful Hal. These vivid and fragmentary images of the grotesques piece together a fantastic and comic picture of the carnival collective in Winesburg.Chapter Two mainly discusses the implicit carnival rituals of crowning and decrowning. The ups and downs, changes and shifts of their lives symbolize the carnival crowning and decrowning, which emphasize the humorous quality of the novel and embody the carnival sense of the world-nothing in the world is absolute and carnival emphasizes death and rebirth, change and reform.Chapter Three explores the carnival spirit immersed in the novel. The thorough subversion contained in the carnival is embodied in people’s fight against industrialism, conventions and norms, and religious beliefs. In the meanwhile, the novel also contains the spirit of renewal. With this spirit, they can break through the external bondage and find a new world of freedom and equality.From the above analysis, the thesis believes that the town, Winesburg, is actually a carnival square, in which all sorts of people play their roles boisterously. Their weird behavior, billingsgate language and profligate life style are, in fact, the emotional catharsis of these grotesques in the town, and express their longing to liberate themselves from the depression and restriction, so as to achieve freedom and equality.