Sherwood Anderson describes in his book Winesburg, Ohio the sad and lonely lives of the people in this rural American town. Most of the story is about George Willard, a young newspaper reporter whose development is tracked through a gawky childhood and into a goofy adulthood. The author wants the reader to pity various members of the town whose lives are filed with dislike, loneliness, and awkward sadness.

Anderson uses Willard to somewhat represent hope in the sad story. In the end he was able to leave behind the town full of the grotesques, which was more than anyone else could do. Many of the characters were trapped in unhappy marriages, or in their own minds. They are constrained by society's expectations and social norms. The role of each character is to show the reader different perspectives of rejection by public opinion.

The setting of a typical rural...