9/22/2013

   Throughout the week, our class has been having an insightful discussion about the novel, Winesburg, Ohio.  Doing the seminar in smaller groups was a good choice.  I liked how there was a bigger chance of someone having the opportunity to make their claim and have a chance to explain it without having to worry about someone else needing to talk.  Doing the seminars in smaller groups allowed for more in depth conversations about the individual stories, and helped me look at the stories in a new light.
   My group did our seminar over the story "Adventure."  I thought our discussion went extremely well, and we all brought up good points that showed our close reading of the text. One of the points that we talked about was the point about the words "walk" vs. "run" not only in "Adventure," but throughout the entire novel of Winesburg, Ohio as a whole.  While I was reading the book, I indexed, circled, and underlined the word walk like a madman.  Every time the word came up (which was a lot), I would think to myself, "This is an important word that has a much deeper meaning, and I am going to find out what that meaning is."  The word walk is important because it shows up in about every story in the novel.  Many characters end up walking up and down the roads of Winesburg, and many go outside to walk and gather their thoughts.  I think walking represents confusion, being unsure, and being troubled with aspects of life.  When a character walks, he or she is confused or unsure of his or her thoughts.  However, when a character runs, he or she is certain and acting on impulse.  He or she is not thinking about the consequences or the causes of his or her actions, but letting his or her impulses make the decisions.  The first time I figured out the significance of the word "run" was in "Adventure."  The narrator states, "Without stopping to think of what she intended to do, she ran downstairs through the dark house and out into the rain.  As she stood on the little grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain on her body a mad desire to run naked through the streets to possession of her," (Anderson 111).  At this point, Alice is not thinking, but doing.  She is letting her impulses make decisions for her that she would not normally make.  The Alice stops and realizes what she is doing.  She collapses to the ground and begins to crawl on her hands and knees back to her house.   Her impulses scare her so much that she can't even get up and walk back to her house.  She has to crawl on her hands and knees because she is defeated and mortified. She crawls back to her house and accepts her truth. She accepts her fate of being alone for the rest of her life and gives up hope.  This is the truth she accepts which makes her a grotesque.
   There are so many other interesting points that I could talk about from my group's discussion as well as other groups' discussions.  I enjoy doing seminars like this because they help me further understand the stories and look at them with a new point of view.