The Thinker by Sherwood Anderson, 1917
The magic trick:
Exceptional character portrait
“The Thinker” captures a familiar but elusive character in literature – the man from town who isn’t of the town. Seth Richmond feels he is an outsider in Winesburg, though he’s grown up in Winesburg. The story digs into the various traits that go into such a feeling, so that the resulting character isn’t a flat, one-way stereotype but instead is a nuanced, fascinating original. Seth is equal parts ego and insecurity; ambition and laziness; advanced yet immature. In many ways, we see that he is right: he is exceptional and probably should grow beyond this town. But in other ways, we also see that isn’t nearly as smart as he thinks he is. He has a long way to go for his reality to catch up with his dreams. It’s one of the book’s best character portraits.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
In the relationship between Seth Richmond and his mother, there was a quality that even at eighteen had begun to color all of his traffic with men. An almost unhealthy respect for the youth kept the mother for the most part silent in his presence. When she did speak sharply to him he had only to look steadily into her eyes to see dawning there the puzzled look he had already noticed in the eyes of others when he looked at them.
The truth was that the son thought with remarkable clearness and the mother did not. She expected from all people certain conventional reactions to life. A boy was your son, you scolded him and he trembled and looked at the floor. When you had scolded enough he wept and all was forgiven. After the weeping and when he had gone to bed, you crept into his room and kissed him.
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