Drink by Sherwood Anderson, 1919
The magic trick:
Presenting a series of dichotomies
“Drink” presents some interesting dichotomies. The central one, of course, is the protagonist: Tom Foster, a young man who grew up on the mean streets of Cincinnati. As such, he’s seen the worst of violent street gangs and sinful prostitution rings. You wouldn’t get that from meeting him in Winesburg, though. His character his described as quiet and gentle. He’s thoughtful, observant, and reserved.
This contradiction works very well in the story, because he’s trying to figure out the world. For instance, he wants to think women – like his Grandma – are innocent, even as his memories of prostitutes conflict with this. He wants to somehow segment off his feelings and desires, too, away from reality and sealed in his private thoughts.
Drink, then, provides a strange combination of things. On one hand, Tom’s getting drunk for the first time presents an opportunity to bring these dichotomies together into one. He sees the world differently, acts differently, speaks his mind. But on the other, drink is only yet another dichotomy in itself – a foil to the otherwise sober character.
Lots to think about with this one.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
One could not help wondering where Tom Foster got his gentleness. In Cincinnati he had lived in a neighborhood where gangs of tough boys prowled through the streets, and all through his early formative years he ran about with tough boys. For a while he was a messenger for a telegraph company and delivered messages in a neighborhood sprinkled with houses of prostitution. The women in the houses knew and loved Tom Foster and the tough boys in the gangs loved him also.
He never asserted himself. That was one thing that helped him escape. In an odd way he stood in the shadow of the wall of life, was meant to stand in the shadow. He saw the men and women in the houses of lust, sensed their casual and horrible love affairs, saw boys fighting and listened to their tales of thieving and drunkenness, unmoved and strangely unaffected.
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