In “A Man of Ideas,” Anderson introduces Joe Welling: the local Standard Oil agent and a frenetic conversationalist given to bursts of inspiration that he shares with anyone who will listen. Anderson uses color imagery to juxtapose Joe’s personality with that of his dying mother:
HE LIVED WITH his mother, a grey, silent woman with a peculiar ashy complexion. The house in which they lived stood in a little grove of trees beyond where the main street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek. His name was Joe Welling, and his father had been a man of some dignity in the community, a lawyer, and a member of the state legislature at Columbus. Joe himself was small of body and in his character unlike anyone else in town. He was like a tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire.
Joe's mother is described as lacking color, while Joe himself is described as the sensory opposite: bright and intense, like a volcano. This passage is also a play on words, as the mother's grayish complexion calls to mind the aftermath of an eruption or a spent volcano, while Joe is still erupting.
It is precisely this volcanic energy that alienates Joe from his community, however, because his tendency to burst into diatribes and "pounce" on passersby in order to regale them with his thoughts leads the citizens of Winesburg to find him incredibly annoying. This is the source of Joe's own alienation at the beginning of his story.
In "Respectability," Anderson sets his sights on Wash Williams, the telegraph operator for Winesburg, whose ghastly appearance matches his horrendous character. Anderson sets up his description of Williams in a particularly vivid example of visual imagery:
[...] you have perhaps seen, blinking in a corner of his iron cage, a huge, grotesque kind of monkey, a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This monkey is a true monster. In the completeness of his ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty. Children stopping before the cage are fascinated, men turn away with an air of disgust, and women linger for a moment, trying perhaps to remember which one of their male acquaintances the thing in some faint way resembles.
This imagery then becomes the basis for an equally evocative simile, as the narrator makes it clear that the reason for bringing up this "grotesque" monkey is because the monkey is similar to Wash Williams:
Had you been in the earlier years of your life a citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio, there would have been for you no mystery in regard to the beast in his cage. “It is like Wash Williams,” you would have said. “As he sits in the corner there, the beast is exactly like old Wash sitting on the grass in the station yard on a summer evening after he has closed his office for the night.”
Visual appearance and inner character are closely correlated in Anderson's stories, and in this case, Anderson sets up Williams's horrific exterior in order to explain his internal state of moral decay. In this case, Williams wants to be isolated from his community—one of few examples in the stories of intentional alienation.
In "The Teacher," Kate Swift finds herself attracted to George Willard—despite the fact that he is her student. Anderson uses striking imagery to convey the power of this attraction and to emphasize the power dynamic between the mature Kate and the young George:
A great eagerness to open the door of life to the boy, who had been her pupil and who she thought might possess a talent for the understanding of life, had possession of her. So strong was her passion that it became something physical. Again her hands took hold of his shoulders and she turned him about. In the dim light her eyes blazed. She arose and laughed, not sharply as was customary with her, but in a queer, hesitating way. “I must be going,” she said. “In a moment, if I stay, I’ll be wanting to kiss you.”
Anderson describes the passion seizing Kate as though it's a physical force. There is some implied tactile imagery when Kate takes "hold" of George's shoulders, as if she's seizing him tightly because she's so overcome by passion. This, in turn, changes her appearance, as Anderson uses visual imagery to describe the way Kate's eyes "blaze" with light, standing out from the gloom of the room.
The power of this transformation fits with Anderson's depiction of passion throughout Winesburg, Ohio: it is something that characters find themselves consumed by, often to the point of helplessness. This is a key moment in George's coming of age story and just another example of an extremely confusing event that leaves him bewildered about the nature of love, attraction, and relationships.
