Winesburg, Ohio

Wing Biddlebaum has lived in Winesburg, Ohio, for 20 years as a recluse, isolated from the town community. His only friend is a young journalist, George Willard, who regularly visits since Wing is afraid to leave his property on his own. In George’s presence, Wing gains the confidence to venture into town.

Wing’s hands are uncharacteristically expressive, and he often feels overly conscious of them and the way they distinguish him from other people. Wing is famous for his dexterity, which, paired with his elusiveness, makes him seem more “grotesque” in the eyes of the townspeople.

George feels curious about Wing’s hands. One afternoon, Wing criticizes George’s tendency to acquiesce to the influence of others. Wing feverishly describes a pastoral scene in which young men attentively listen to an older man. Placing his hands on George’s shoulders, he encourages George to dream for himself. When his hands move to George’s face, Wing breaks out of his reverie and runs off teary-eyed. George resolves never to ask Wing about his hands, sensing that they are the reason for his reclusiveness.

The narrator reveals that in his younger years, Wing was a Pennsylvania schoolteacher named Adolph Myers. He had a soft manner toward his students, usually expressed with his hands. The boys were fond of their teacher’s idealism. However, one of the boys began openly sharing his dreams of being inappropriately touched by his teacher, which the town misinterpreted as fact. Convinced that Adolph was molesting the schoolboys, the town fathers attacked Adolph, intending to hang him outside his house. Out of pity, they allowed Adolph to leave town instead. Adolph moved in with his aunt in Winesburg and changed his name. He soon started hiding his hands out of fear that he would be attacked again.

Wing spends a solitary evening at home, yearning for George’s company. While cleaning up, he notices bread crumbs on the floor. He gets on his knees to eat them, which causes him to resemble a priest engaged in prayer.

Doctor Reefy is a widower who was once married to a wealthy girl. Their union elicited the curiosity of many, though the doctor’s wife died within the first year of their marriage.

The doctor spends most of his time cooped up in his office, which people hardly ever visit. He uses his time to think of new ideas, but they are often so overwhelming that he tries to forget them just as quickly. He writes his thoughts on scraps of paper, then throws them into his duster pockets, where they turn into hard balls. The only time he removes them is to playfully throw them at his friend, John Spaniard.

The narrator shares how Doctor Reefy courted his wife, comparing their story to the delicious “twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg” (19). These apples, usually rejected by pickers, have a concentrated sweetness in just one side of the fruit, but few know the truth about them.

The narrator says the middle-aged doctor met his future wife after she had become pregnant. With both of her parents dead, the young woman had been courted by multiple suitors hoping to take possession of the vast tracts of land belonging to her family. Only two of these suitors stood out: a jeweler’s son who talked obsessively of virginity and a large-eared boy who said nothing but seduced her constantly.

The young woman assumed she would eventually marry the jeweler’s son. The more she listened to him talk about virginity, however, the more she began to suspect that he was the most lustful of her suitors. She started to have nightmares about the jeweler’s son passionately biting her body. She turned her attention toward the large-eared boy, but while having sex, the large-eared boy actually did bite her. She became pregnant soon after.

During their first meeting, Doctor Reefy seemed to know exactly what had happened to the young woman, which made her feel drawn to him. The two became inseparable. On one occasion when the young woman was in the office with him, the doctor pulled out a patient’s tooth, causing the patient to scream and bleed on the young woman’s dress. After the patient left, Doctor Reefy drove the young woman into the country. The young woman later lost her pregnancy but remained attached to the doctor “like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples” (21). They married in the fall. By spring, Reefy’s wife had died. During the winter, Doctor Reefy read the thoughts he had scribbled to her and, finding them fanciful, stuffed them into his pockets.

George’s mother, Elizabeth Willard, lives in the New Willard House, the hotel she inherited from her father. An obscure disease has made her lethargic, but she continues to maintain it to the chagrin of her husband, Tom. Tom is frustrated by his marriage and the hotel’s failing business. He harbors political aspirations and hopes to one day become a Democrat governor in a Republican state.

Elizabeth feels attached to George, though they are often reserved in each other’s company. Whenever George leaves for work, Elizabeth goes to his room and prays that God will spare him from a meaningless life, as well as a life of success. Sometimes, George sits with Elizabeth in her room. They look out the window and observe portraits of town life. One recurring scene is the rivalry between the baker, Abner Groff, and a cat that regularly sneaks into the bakery. This particular scene makes Elizabeth weep because it reminds her of her own life. Elizabeth encourages George to spend more time outdoors. In his confusion, he obeys and goes on walks.

One night, after several days without his company, Elizabeth goes looking for George. She listens through his door and hears George speaking to himself in a low tone. She’s gratified to think that he’s behaving this way because of her influence. She wants George to preserve a creative part of herself that she let die long ago.

Tom suddenly exits George’s room. Unlike Elizabeth, Tom wants George to be ambitious and desire financial success. He rebukes George for being aloof in public and encourages him to “wake up” if he wants to pursue his dream of being a writer. Elizabeth briefly considers returning to George’s room, but instead resolves to take a pair of scissors and stab Tom.

As a young girl, Elizabeth aspired to become an actress and was enamored with the traveling actors who stayed at the hotel. She was eager to see the world beyond Winesburg, often dressing up in fashions that reflected her cosmopolitan ideals. The traveling actors’ experiences contradicted her ambitions, indicating that life in the city was as boring as it was in Winesburg. Elizabeth refused to believe it and instead imagined that she had unique, intimate connections with each of the visitors. She would often kiss them before suddenly weeping and then felt confused that they did not weep as well.

Elizabeth opens a box of stage makeup that had been left behind by an old theatrical company. She paints her face so that she can confront Tom not as a “ghostly worn-out figure […] but something quite unexpected and startling” (29). When she gets up from her chair, however, she finds herself robbed of her strength. George comes to her room to tell her his plans of moving to the city. Elizabeth tries to challenge his motivations for leaving, but this makes George lament that neither of his parents can understand his ambitions. He indicates that Tom’s advice produced the opposite of its intended effect and cemented George’s resolve to leave Winesburg for at least a year. Elizabeth feels quietly happy, but instead of expressing it, she urges George to spend more time outdoors. George obeys and goes for a walk.

Whenever George’s employer goes out to drink, Doctor Parcival visits the newspaper office to talk about his life and give George advice. During their first meeting, the doctor admits that he wants to impress George with his stories. George finds the doctor’s stories fascinating, but wonders if any of them are true. The doctor remains coy about the details of his stories. At one point, he alludes to the murder of a doctor in Chicago, jesting that he himself could have been one of the murderers.

Doctor Parcival came to Winesburg five years earlier and was immediately arrested for getting into a fight with the local baggageman. He established himself as a doctor in the village and possessed enough wealth to get by without seeing many patients. The doctor claims to have once been a reporter in another state. When Parcival reveals that his father had mental health challenges that required him to stay at a psychiatric institute, he lets slip that all his stories occurred in Ohio. Parcival’s mother was a washerwoman who desired Parcival to become a minister.

The doctor tells George about his brother, a railroad painter who always came home covered in an unpleasant orange paint. Instead of sharing his earnings with his family, the doctor’s brother would spend it at the saloon. Whenever the doctor’s brother was away for work, however, groceries, clothes, and other supplies would arrive for Parcival and his mother, which made their mother love the railroad painter more than Parcival.

While studying to be a minister, Parcival often prayed for his father and his brother. He also stole money from his brother to indulge in his own trifles. When his father died, Parcival went to inspect the body. The employees of the psychiatric institute treated Parcival as an honored guest, hoping to cover up their mistreatment of the patients. Parcival blessed his father’s corpse, saying, “Let peace brood over this carcass” (35).

As he tells George this story, Doctor Parcival starts to worry that he is straying away from his objective. He tells George that he wants to warn him—reporter to reporter—that other people are contemptible. He wants George to feel superior to everyone else so that he can turn out like Parcival’s brother, who felt he was better than the doctor and their mother. Parcival wants his brother to be remembered for his personality, instead of his death in a drunken accident on the railroad.

Doctor Parcival starts writing a book, which he reads to George in his office. One morning, a little girl is killed in a road accident on Main Street. Doctor Parcival is the only medical practitioner who refuses to come and help and, when he realizes what he has done, he laments his actions to George, fearing that he will be killed for his inattention. He urges George to finish the book if Parcival ever gets hanged. He says that the central message of his book is “that everyone in the world is Christ and they are all crucified” (37).

One evening, George Willard sneaks out of the alley behind the Winesburg Eagle’s offices. He’s been nervously planning this adventure all day but only found the courage to follow through on it that night.

George reaches the Trunnion household and calls out to the Trunnion daughter, Louise, through the kitchen door. Louise feels reluctant to answer George for fear that her father will disapprove. She tells him to meet her by William’s barn.

Since George had received a letter from Louise earlier that day offering herself to him, George feels frustrated by Louise’s contradictory behavior now. She appears at the barn as promised, though she looks disheveled from doing her household chores.

George is too nervous to take her hand. Louise accuses George of thinking that he is better than her, which provokes him to speak boldly, flirting with her and promising to be discreet. They go for a walk and George reaches for her hand. Louise indicates that she can’t go too far from home. They find a pile of boards beside a berry field and sit together.

Later that night, George returns to Main Street and buys a cigar from the drugstore. Feeling satisfied, he spends some time talking to the store clerk before returning home. In the silence, he laughs to himself that nobody will ever know about him and Louise.