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MLA
Format
[The name of the writer]
[The name of the instructor]
[The course title]
[The date]
Death in the Woods
“Death in the Woods,” by Sherwood Anderson
demonstrates mankind’s ability to take for
granted the gifts received through our Mother Earth,
aptly symbolized by an old woman with no name. The
beauty that lies within the ceremonies of life and
death that are constantly taking place all around
us and within us is presented in the story. The
author nicely manages the period in time and the
place in which the events of this story take place.
Demonstrating society’s lack of concern for
an old woman, the writer says:
“People
drive right down a road and never notice an old
woman like that” [Sherwood Anderson, 1933]
The
setting of the fiction is being developed along
with the time chosen by the writer to commence the
story the role of the ‘old woman’ commences
and we know he considers her to be strong, not frail
like the people that we usually associate with the
condition of being aged. She is being developed
by the writer as diligently working to make a few
eggs and hen’s trade into enough food to feed
a farm. She carries the burden of feeding and caring
for those that depend on her, and yet she manages
the load without any glory. Her burden is both physically
and symbolically heavy, (reflected in her drooping
shoulders), and yet she never lets anyone down.
The cows, horses, dogs, pigs and men somehow always
get fed despite her limited resources. She manages
it simply because she must; it is her role just
as it is the role of our Mother Earth.
“She
had to scheme all of her life about getting things
fed…” [Sherwood Anderson, 1933]
The
atmosphere is being built to complete the text of
the story. The prevailing emotional tone or attitude,
especially one associated with a specific place
or time and the prevailing tone or mood of a work
of the old woman is interesting and depicts an exciting
mood existing in a particular place where she works.
Throughout life the old woman fed those who depended
on her, and she fulfilled this role in death while
the dogs feed on the food in her bag. The narrator
understood that this was simply her part in this
world:
“She
died in a clearing in the woods and even after her
death continued feeding animal life” [Sherwood
Anderson, 1933]
Even
beyond that, she will eventually lay to rest in
the ground where she will feed back into nature.
She has come from the earth, and now she completes
the circle to return back to the earth. Once again
Anderson symbolizes the all-important cycle of life
that we all must exist within.
In
her last journey into town she trades her meager
goods for food. As the old woman starts back for
the farm, followed by the dogs that depend on her
scraps, it is growing late and cold. The dogs run
in circles and the moon shines in a full circle.
Round and round the dogs run in quiet ceremony in
a sacred clearing of the woods. The author reaches
the peak of the text when he writes: -
“I knew all about it afterward, when I grew
to be a man, because once in a woods in Illinois,
on another Winter night, I saw a pack of dogs just
like that. The dogs were waiting for me to die just
as they had waited for the old woman that night…”
[Sherwood Anderson, 1933].
In "Death in the Woods" the central character
set by the author is not only Ma Grimes but the
mature narrator who looks back on earlier experiences:
the sight of an old, oppressed woman trudging from
her farm into town in order to obtain the necessary
food for her men and animals; the time he worked
for a German farmer who hired a "bound girl";
the moonlit winter night he saw half-wild dogs almost
revert to wolves in the presence of the near-death
of a human. The setting and atmosphere selected
is extremely relevant to each other.
The role of the mature narrator as he struggles
to weld his diverse experiences and images into
a whole that will bring order out of their diffuseness
and beauty out of their ugliness. All of her days
Ma Grimes "fed animal life." Only at the
end of the story does the reader realize that the
most important life Ma Grimes fed was the creative
life of the narrator.
Thus, the story as a whole demonstrates, as Anderson
explains in its final sentence, "why I have
been impelled to try to tell the simple story over
again." the story comes to a close, that now,
after perhaps ten or twelve years, Anderson has
been able to create a beautifully unified work of
art.
References
Sherwood Anderson Death in the woods
[Death in the woods and other stories, 1933]
Ann Charters The Story And Its Writer compact 5th
Edition. |
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