Winesburg, Ohio

          Winesburg, Ohio is full of connections between the different stories in the novel as well as other famous works and stories.  Anderson repeated motifs of everything from hands to darkness to grotesqueness.  He described almost every character in the stories' hands in a very specific way bringing out every little detail.  He also emphasized characters like Wing Biddlebaum's hands in the book "Hands". I am not sure what this intense fascination with hands that Anderson shows means but it has to have some symbolism and must connect to the rest of the novel in some way.         
          Anderson also has a very fascinating role for George Willard in this novel.  George is like a sponge that soaks up all of the truths that all of the other characters in the book tell him.  Characters Like Wing, Enoch, and Wash Williams all tell a truth to George Willard.  Wash is telling him the evils of women and what a bad idea it would be to get married, Enoch is telling him the story of his love affair and all about his imaginary friends, and wing i trying not to let him conform and be like the rest of society.  He takes all of these truths along with the truths that all the other characters tell him and i believe he becomes the old man in the first book and writes the book of the grotesques that is describe.  He bases all of the grotesques in The Book of the Grotesques off the the citizens of Winesburg and the truths that he mentions in the first chapter are all of the truths that he collected while living in Winesburg before he left.
            He is also used to tell the stories of the other characters many times.  Enoch Robinson and Wash Williams are both drawn to George to tell their stories even when they wont talk to anyone else.  George uses this later to write the book of the grotesque and this attraction that these people have to him is just further proof that George is the old man in "The Book of the Grotesque".  In the first chapter of the novel a carpenter comes to the old mans house to fix him a bed and then all of a sudden the carpenter is telling George his life story and breaking down crying.  This would not happen to most people but seems to happen a lot to George Willard and it would not be too out of the question for it to happen to him again.  This fits the pattern of how people react and talk to George easily and makes it seem as if this old man is in fact George Willard.