One Teacher for Two Men

As we wrap up Winesburg, Ohio, we have encountered our first set of stories which tell the story of Kate Swift, George Willard’s old teacher.  Kate is first introduced in the story The Strength of God, where Reverend Curtis Hartman, a man married to a woman who has a repressed sexuality, which in turn makes him even more repressed views Kate as this gift from God.  He first sees her smoking a cigarette and lying on her bed.  The fact that she is smoking means that she is perceived by Curtis as having the control, cigars are of course a phallic symbol because why not, it looks sort of like a rod.  This sudden power she has over Curtis is shown in the passion that he uses in his sermons.  Also, he views  her through a chip in a stain glass window, the chip was on the heel of the boy in the window.  This shows that she is his Achilles heel, which means that she is his weakness, she completely takes over his mind without her knowledge.  It is not the actual nature nor appearance of Kate Swift that actually attracts Hartman,  we learn in The Teacher that she has a very unappealing figure and some form of skin condition.  Rather that if it was not her, it would be any woman.  Hartman believes that this is a test from God which means that he feels that she is divine which is an example of idealization, where he views his feelings as totally rational and that this is all okay.

In actuality, the real story behind Kate Swift is much more sad.  Similar to Wing Biddlebaum in the beginning of the book,  she has an urge to pull the greatness out from her students, she most notably noticed this spark when she had George Willard.  However, in her head, her want for emotional connection turns physical when she begins meeting with George Willard.  This makes her feel very conflicted, which is why Reverend Hartman sees her crying naked in her room.  George is ok with this and when she turns physical is ok with it.  However, the last time they meet, she embraces him and then comes to her senses and beat him and runs away.  George is now conflicted and feels as though he missed something that she was saying about him.  When in actuality, what he is missing is that she just wants to make him the best he can be and to help nurture his creativity.

Wash Cannot Wash Away His Anger

Through the stories so far that we have read in Winesburg, Ohio, all the main characters of the stories have been a grotesque.  In this book, a grotesque is someone who lets an idea or truth of their life overcome them and become the only thing that they fixate on.  The character who goes through the most change because of his grotesque may be Wash Williams a man who was so committed and so loyal to his wife which eventually lead to his downfall.  Wash Williams is the only character so far who at some point treated his woman with respect, he did not have sex before he got married to her which shows incredible devotion towards her.  The language of this story leads us to also believe that they did not have sex together at all which leads her to cheat on him with several men in town.  There is a scene where his wife hands him the seeds to a garden while he does all the gardening.  This symbolizes the fact that his wife is in control of his manhood or his “seeds” which sounds really gross.  However, this shows that this relationship is almost flipped from the traditional married couples in the time period, where the woman is very submissive to the man.  Wash after learning of his wife’s infidelity simply sends her home to her mother’s, now what is interesting is that he sends all the 400 dollars to her and when he sells their house to him, he sends that money to her.  This shows how he is still submissive to her and even idolizes her.  Next he receives a message from the woman’s mother saying that she wanted to have him come to her house.  When he arrives he is presented with his former wife stark naked which enraged him, causing him to attack the woman’s mother.  

This hatred for his mother and law was never resolved, as she died of a fever a month after this encounter.  As this was unresolved, the anger towards her and her daughter, became a hatred towards all women.  This hatred towards all women is a form of projection where he directs his anger towards all women because he is unable to resolve his feelings with his wife and her mother.  Freud would view Wash’s passiveness and submissiveness as a form of an altered Oedipal complex where he possibly identified and sympathized with the mother rather than the father which caused him to get more feminine mannerism.  I argue that Wash is the most grotesque out of all those we have seen, this is because Wash’s trauma has him do a complete 180 degree turn in his behaviors and his appearance.  He seems to be the only character where what makes him grotesque effects more than just his mental ability.

Paper Apples

In the story called “Paper Pills” from the book Winesburg, Ohio, we learn the sad backstory of Doctor Reefy and how he briefly married a woman before she died, from what, it never explicitly says but we are lead to believe that it was the truths that the doctor would read to her during the winter that killed her in the spring.  However, through the story of Doctor Reefy, we learn a lot about his wife, who is only referred to as the “tall dark girl” who inherited her father's large farm.  In this short story we learn that the tall dark girl had two suitors who stood out, both being polar opposites of the other.  One who only talks of being a virgin and the other who barely talks and tries to kiss her a lot.  With the “pure one” she has dreams where  he would hold her in his hands and where he bit her,  so she quickly abandoned that one, however, the other suitor the “black-haired boy” in real life gets her pregnant and bites her in the moment.

In literature, an apple is used to symbolize purity and when one is bitten it shows tainted innocence. In the tall dark girl’s dream, the jeweler’s son holds her in his hands like one would hold an apple and bites her, to show her fear of becoming impure from his lust.  On the contrary, the dark-haired boy actually bit her and got her pregnant, these two event happens happen at the same time to show that she has become impure by getting pregnant before marriage while the bite mark left on her shoulder shows the world what she has done.

In Winesburg, Ohio a gnarled or disfigured apple is said to have a sweeter taste than the regular apples.  The comparison to this is Doctor Reefy himself, while not being physically the most attractive man , he is described as having extraordinarily large knuckles which make the hands look disfigured like the apples that no one wants to eat.  Just like these apples Doctor Reefy has a very true inner beauty, which only the tall dark girl can see after going into see him for a checkup.  She could then not go back to the regular suitors just as those who eat the misshapen fruits cannot go back to eating the perfectly round apples.  This story provides two different meanings to what an apple can symbolize, one of true inner beauty and one meaning to be unclean.

Freudian Trio in Pop Culture

 Sigmund Freud is known as the father of Psychoanalysis and rightfully so.  With his, quirks such as his obsession with sex and cocaine aside, he did a lot to further our understanding of the mind, whether it be what he directly discovered or finding out certain things that he discovered turned out to be false.  Freud discovered that there are three parts of the mind, the Id, Ego and Superego who all are in constant conflict with the other.  The Id, or as I personally enjoy calling it, the lizard part of the brain, this contains the most primal instincts for all animals to survive, the need to get food, reproduce, the fight or flight response as well as the subconscious urge to avoid pain and be drawn to pleasure.  The Superego is sort of like the parent to the Ego and Id, it strives for perfection and is a sense of extreme morality in the mind and is not as impulsive as the Id.  The Ego is the moderator between the two, it is a partially conscious part of the mind tries to find a medium to satisfy the Id and Superego.  His idea of these three aspects of the mind can be seen very commonly in popular culture.

These three aspects of the conscious are popular themes to play upon in T.V. shows.  Generally the three main protagonists of a show have one of the three parts of the mind as their prominent trait Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl are three caretakers for Steven in Steven Universe.  Garnet is the ego, she is calm and collected, she chooses sides with both Pearl and Amythest, just like the Ego, she is not totally without emotion but is not all instinct. Amethyst is the Id, she is out of control and causes trouble for Steven sometimes in their adventures.  Pearl is the Superego, she is very strict, she scolds Amethyst and sets the rules and expectations for the group, just as the Superego sets the rules for the person based off of what is socially acceptable for the person to do.  These three show the various types of defense mechanisms that the mind does based off of what it automatically reverts to.  Amethyst shows a lot of anger built up towards Pearl and then takes it out on others, which is displacement.  Garnet is very methodical and especially when she is exposed to conflict in the show, this is called intellectualization if it is not a conscious decision and is thought suppression if it is a conscious effort.  Pearl being the Superego, is very passive aggressive and uses guilt as defense mechanisms.  As much as Freud was off of his rocker on a lot of his ideas, some of his most successful works and ideas have lasted through the times in culture.