A Study Of Individualism In Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg Ohio

Modern literature in the 20th century abandoned the traditional rational thinking mode,and stood on the standpoint of life ontology,and questioned important issues such as human spirit crisis,human alienation,absurdity of life,and the meaning of life,all of which can be attributed to subject’s inability to maintain its own existence through subjectivity.The most obvious symptom of this crisis is the myth of individualism.Sherwood Anderson’s representative work Winesburg,Ohio pays special attention to the dialectical relationship between "Truth" and"Subject".By contrasting the growth and departure of the protagonist George Willard with Grotesques trapped in the cage of "Truth",Sherwood Anderson criticizes the individualism ideology under the grand narrative of American capitalism such as "American Dream" and puts forward unique views for human liberation."Grotesques" and "Truth" and their dialectical relations are Sherwood Anderson’s important metaphors for American capitalist society,and also the key breakthrough of this thesis.Synchronicity and diachronicity are two angles inspected in this thesis.On the one hand,the relationship between history,reality and truth from the perspective of individualism,then its limit and influence on the subject are explained by interpreting various Grotesques in the novel;on the other hand,the liberation and reconstruction of the subject are explored from George Willard’s life experience and his departure so as to reflect on various problems caused by capitalist individualism and the possibility of communism.