Grotesque Faces and Masks of Sherwood Anderson's Characters

Abstract

  The purpose of the presented publication is critical analysis, interpretation and connotative searches of the novels of a great American writer Sherwood Anderson. From this point of view, the work discusses Anderson's short, plotless novels and their composition. Writer's writing style, environment, criticism of the era, crisis of culture and art, philosophical and psychological topics are shown as well. The architectonics of Sh. Anderson's novels is solid, concise and capacious. They contain the most important fragments of human existence, sometimes the entire history. Sh. Anderson comprehends present time, difficult existential environment with all intensity. Anderson's protagonist characters compete with time, era, degraded system and authoritarian regime. They are characters out of the time stream. The writer's tragic faces and masks create the reality of the era. Capitalist values ​​and worldview destroy and enslave people with high ideal principles and values. Anderson's characters are victims of violence, harsh realities of capitalism, and pressures of society. They are most worried about the scarcity of human resources and the lack of humanity. A complete disaster of Anderson's characters is caused due to idleness and loneliness. The characters, who are broken from  life, talk to us about the unbearable reality. All these are convulsions of an intolerant epoch. Discursive thinking, connotative searches, interpretation, meditations, multi-dimensionality of thought, critical analysis, judgment, confrontation, understanding of metaphors and symbols, methodological searches follow the presented texts.