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| Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth |
Summary and analysis
BIOGRAPHY
He was the third of seven children. His mother died in 1895 and his father started to be absent for weeks, so Sherwood had to take several jobs to support his family. Anderson's talent for selling was evident, and he was very successful in this type of business.
In November 1912, Anderson had a mental breakdown, left his wife and their three children and decided to become a creative writer. He divorced Cornelia in 1916; later he got married to Mitchel, they divorced, and he got married again to Elizabeth; they divorced in 1932, and he got married again to Eleanor Copenhaver.
In 1916, Anderson's first book, Windy Mc Pherson's Son, was released, and in 1919, his most famous collection of short stories, Winesburg, Ohio. In 1923, he published Many Marriages, where he explored the new sexual freedom. Dark Laughter appeared in 1925, and it was his only bestseller.
SUMMARY
Ray Pearson, an old man, and Hal Winters, a twenty-two-year old boy, were employees in Wills farm. They didn’t have a lot in common: Ray was married and had six children and Hal was single, although he had had some scrapes with women. Besides, Hal was considered a villain, an outlaw. He had two brothers, and was the worst of the three. People said he was “a chip off the old block”, because his father had fits of anger when he was drunk. His father died in a tragic accident on the rail tracks: being drunk, he drove his cart with two horses against an upcoming train, and they -cart, horses and driver- were ran over and got crushed to death. Hal was a good-for-nothing one; he had even robbed his father, and once, they had gone to the street to settle their differences with fists.
But now he was working for Wims, because near Wims farm was a school, and he had a crush on the schoolteacher. Everybody thought that he would get the young woman in trouble.
As Ray was older than him and was married and had children, Hal decided to ask advice from him: he had got Nell, the teacher, in trouble, so what did he have to do? Did he have to marry her, or abandon her? You know there and then people's opinion about marriage was a kind of cliche: when a man got married he lost his freedom.
Hal didn’t give any answer because he didn’t know what to say to him. He went home thinking about the question. Walking there, he met his wife. Following her along the track, he experienced very opposed feelings: on one hand, he was absorbed by the beauty of the autumn landscape, and on the other, he felt a kind of rage against his sharp-featured, sharp-voiced wife who gave him sharping orders.
So Ray went on a little confused and felt again the beauty of the country. When he was young he also had got his wife in trouble, but he thought he didn’t cheat her, because she had wanted the same. Then, he remembered his projects of youth, his lost illusions…, but he also remembered his children clutching at him. However, for him at that moment, children were only “accidents of life”.
By now he knew the answer to Hal’s question: he shouldn’t pay for anything, he wasn’t the only one “guilty”, because what Hal had wanted, Nell also had. Ray had to prevent Hal from making the error of marrying, because marriage was a bondage. So he met Hal with his idea bursting out of him, but he got a shoking susprise when Hal told him he had already decided to marry Nell, because he knew she was no fool and she also wanted him.
And Ray Pearson had to laugh his head off. Of course, the piece of advice he had decided to tell Hal would have been a complete fraud... because he loved his familiar life.
And now perhaps we understand why the narrator says this isn’t the story of Windpeter Winters, nor the story of Hal Winter, but, although it doesn’t seem to be, the story of Ray Pearson.
Anderson has written the story just as if he was telling us a tale aloud, as ordinary people told stories sitting by the fire, full of digressions and without a straight linear time.
