Blog #5

Blog #5

Sherwood Anderson’s “Paper Pills”

While Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” was one of the more difficult novels/short story cycles to understand while reading, in retrospect the integration of similar motifs and themes throughout each of the stories creates a complex and thoroughly interesting piece of work that I have grown to love. While each story provides an important piece to the story of George Willard who appears to be the main character in the novel, one story that resonated particularly strong with me was the story, “Paper Pills”.

               The story begins with the description of an old man named Doctor Reefy who sounds suspiciously like the man described in “The Book of the Grotesque”. Doctor Reefy is described as, “an old man with a white beard and huge nose and hands” (Anderson 18). While the author of the man who wrote The Book of the Grotesque in the short story “The Book of the Grotesque”, is described as “an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed” (Anderson 3). These striking similarities lead me to interpret that the two characters must be similar in some way other than old age and white facial hair. The overall description of the two reminds me of a fatherly figure, or a Christ figure. This follows how the old man in the Book of the Grotesques writes of the sacrifices of man in his book, as if by listing these truths and publishing them in a book he can somehow save humanity much like Jesus Christ did. In a similar fashion, Doctor Reefy is a healer by his occupation. He saves many people by “driving a jaded white horse form house to house through the streets of Winesburg” (Anderson 18). Again with the white imagery in his means of transportation, white traditionally represents innocence and godliness, again connecting Doctor Reefy and the old man to a God-like figure.

Another interesting parallel that Anderson draws with the writing of “Paper Pills” is the connection that he makes with the truths written by Doctor Reefy and the hands of Wing Biddlebaum. Wing uses his hands to express the dreams that he wishes to portray on the minds of young children, however they are the truths that eventually lead to the destruction of the life he knew as a school teacher and forced him to live in Winesburg. Now in Winesburg he realizes the consequences of his hands and “the slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets” (Anderson 11). Anderson then goes on to write Paper Pills in which Doctor Reefy wrote “thoughts he had scribbled on the bits of paper. After he had read them he laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls” (Anderson 22). Both characters express some matter of truth through their hands, Wing with the fluid movement and physical contact, and Doctor Reefy with the scribbling on pieces of paper. It is interesting to notice that both of these end up in pockets as if to conceal them from the world. As if the truths expressed by them could somehow lead to the demise and corruption of anyone who came into contact with them.