The philosopher

For the most part Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson is a pretty weird book; there are a lot of characters to remember and a lot of different things that happen to them that make them all eventually tie in with each other. In a way most of these characters are grotesque. The actual meaning of the word grotesque is marked by ludicrous or incongruous; distortion; outlandish or bizarre. Anderson takes from that and describes all the people the writer had ever met as grotesque. Not that they were horrible people but because each person had a truth about them and they took up another truth that basically wasn’t theirs. With this in mind I think of Doctor Parcival. He’s one guy who’s a fire short a couple of sticks. To begin things one of the first pictures you have of him is dirty blackened and yellowed, just untidy. It’s actually really gross because I think at some point some crazy lady goes away with him, although why I will never know… but I digress. So anyways Doctor Parcival develops this thing for George, for a collection of short stories that seem to be completely different he definitely shows up a lot, which I wonder is it a fondness that he has taken with Willard, some kind of admiration, like one would admire a son or child? Or is it something more serious like love or lust? Does he relate to Biddlebaum who never openly says that he has a liking for boys but suggests so when he says that he thinks of the little boy. George Willard is quite the stud though, he gets everybody. But back to Parcival who is trying to convince people that he is something he isn’t that he’s more advisable when in reality he’s not worth actually listening to. But what makes him a grotesque is the truth about him which is that the reason he moved from Chicago to Winesburg in the first place was not to write a book but because him and some other people killed a man then out him in a trunk. When he first arrives in Windeburg he and the baggeman get in a little fight over a trunk then in the next page he goes on the tell George about the men and the man they murdered which is interesting that Anderson put them on paged that are right next to each other and in relatively the same spot as if Anderson was trying to show how Parcival was contradicting himself. Everyone in the town knew he got in a fight over a trunk when he first arrived, and then on the second page he goes and tells this story which makes you automatically connect the dots and say that yes Parcival really killed this man so it’s like he is separating himself from his own actions by telling the story from a different perspective. I almost wonder why he set the particular part that way. Then there is the thing where the child had passed away and the town had called all the practicing doctors to come and check to see if the child was going to be ok but then they all say that she is dead but when Doctor Parcival was asked he said no then later was freaking out for inexplicable reasons about how the town would start whispering about how he didn’t come to help her and eventually they will find him and chase him out of town or hang him which sounds and awfully like another grotesque charcter, Wing Biddlebaum.