1. Introductory Remarks
2. Integrated Structure
3. Questions for Discussion
4. Detailed Study of the Text
/p>
Paraphrase the following sentences.
1. But somehow I had never quite sensed its appalling desolation.
2. From East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of twenty-five miles, there was not one in sight from the train that did not insult and lacerate the eye.
Key:
1. But somehow in the past I never really perceived how shocking and wretched this whole region was.
2. Every house a passenger saw when traveling by train from East Liberty to Greensburg, a distance of twenty-five miles, was so ugly that it offended and hurt his eyes. The generalized statement is an exaggeration again.
Read the following introduction carefully and get to know more about the novel Winesburg, Ohio（《小镇畸人》）.
INTRODUCTION
by Irving Howe
I must have been no more than fifteen or sixteen years old when I first chanced upon Winesburg, Ohio. Gripped by these stories and sketches of Sherwood Anderson’s small-town “grotesques”, I felt that he was opening for me new depths of experience, touching upon half-buried truths which nothing in my young life had prepared me for. A New York City boy who never saw the crops grow or spent time in the small towns that lay sprinkled across America, I found myself overwhelmed by the scenes of wasted life, wasted love—was this the “real” America?—that Anderson sketched in Winesburg. In those days only one other book seemed to offer so powerful a revelation, and that was Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Several years later, as I was about to go overseas as a soldier, I spent my last weekend pass on a somewhat quixotic journey to Clyde, Ohio, the town upon which Winesburg was partly modeled. Clyde looked, I suppose, not very different from most other American towns, and the few of its residents I tried to engage in talk about Anderson seemed quite uninterested. This indifference would not have surprised him; it certainly should not surprise any- one who reads his book.
Key:
In Winesburg, Ohio, the characters struggle to find their place in society. Their sensitive souls are tormented by loneliness, isolation, guilt-ridden pasts, frustrated dreams, and a stifling ability to communicate their feelings and aspirations. Everyone is a prisoner to something, and everyone wants out. The witness, George Willard, a young reporter for the local newspaper, appears in almost all the stories. One after another vivid story unfolds before us.
