Winesburg, Ohio: 17. The Teacher Summary & Analysis

On the same bitterly cold day leading up to Reverend Hartman’s revelation in “The Strength of God,” George Willard is glad that the weekly newspaper has already been printed because it gives him the day off of work. George walks along Wine Creek in the deep snow, comes to a grove where he builds a fire, and sits down to think. George has begun to talk regularly with Kate Swift, his former schoolteacher, and is convinced that she must be in love with him. He pretends that she is there with him and warns her that he knows she’s “just letting on” and that he will find out her true intentions.

Back home at the New Willard House, George lights another fire and begins to have “lustful thoughts.” He embraces his pillow, pretending it is Kate Swift or Helen White, with whom he is “half in love.” Later that evening, the deep snow causes nearly all of Winesburg to stay home and go to bed. Only three people are awake—George working in the Winesburg Eagle office, Kate leaving for a walk through town, and Reverend Hartman waiting in the bell tower.

Recently, Kate has been experiencing an internal crisis of “grief, hope, and desire” that drives her to take long walks around town at night. That afternoon, Kate had been to the doctor and was told that she was in danger of going deaf, but she decides to risk going for a walk in the blizzard. The narrator tangentially discusses Kate’s reputation as a cold, severe schoolteacher who is only rarely happy and has a tendency to invent anecdotes about the authors whose work she teaches.

Kate has become fixated on George Willard, attracted to the childhood whimsy and burgeoning manhood that he dually embodies. She attempts to impart her wisdom onto the young man, telling him that he will have to gain experience and develop his intuition about what people are thinking if he wants to be a writer. On the night, before Reverend Hartman waits to catch a glimpse of Kate in the bell tower, she meets with George and is attracted to him but frustrated that he is not mature enough to understand all of life’s complexities.

On the night of the blizzard, while Reverend Hartman waits for Kate, she goes to the Winesburg Eagle office and has a deep, hour-long conversation with George in hopes that she can “open the door of life” to him. She notices how mature George looks in the lamplight and the two are suddenly overcome with a confusing desire for one another. But when George embraces Kate, she beats him with her fists and runs away, leaving George bewildered as he paces the Eagle office and swears to himself.

This moment of frustration is when Reverend Hartman bursts in on George, overlapping with the same moment from the minister’s point of view in “The Strength of God.” Hartman, having seen Kate naked and emotionally praying in her room after her confusing encounter with George, proclaims that she is an instrument of God. Believing that “the town had gone mad,” George returns home and lies in bed, trying to make sense of what the minister had said in relation to his strange evening with Kate. Exasperated, he comes to the conclusion that he must have missed something Kate was trying to tell him and finally drifts off to sleep.