In "Hands," Anderson chronicles the wretched existence of Wing Biddlebaum, who the townsfolk of Winesburg have alienated because of the incessant fidgeting of Wing’s hands. At the end of the story, Anderson describes Wing’s desperate attempt to scrounge for some crumbs he leaves on the floor after his dinner. Anderson uses a simile that compares Wing’s plaintive motions with those of a person kneeling in prayer:
In the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary.
Anderson’s simile hinges upon the correlation of Wing’s hand movements and the movement of some Christian supplicant twirling their fingers through a rosary during a prayer. The comparison therefore builds upon the important symbol of the human hand, which Anderson develops through multiple characters and multiple stories in Winesburg, Ohio as a way to represent the inner qualities of humanity through their physical appearance. In this case, Anderson highlights the pleasure—and even purpose—that Wing derives from his eating ritual by identifying the physical motions of Wing’s consumption with the motions of Christian ritual.
This passage is an excellent example of how Anderson uses dramatic and seemingly unlikely literary devices to push forward the themes of his stories. In keeping with his thematic exploration of faith, fate, and meaning, Anderson’s juxtaposition of a priest’s piety and Wing’s humiliating hunger emphasizes Wing’s own lack of faith and direction and the desperate grasps for alternate sources of meaning that replace these qualities.
In "Paper Pills," Anderson tells the story of Doctor Reefy—a medical doctor in Winesburg who obsessively pursues philosophical truth. At one point in the story, Anderson uses a simile to compare the warped old apples in the town orchard to the knuckles of Reefy’s twisted hands:
On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all of its sweetness.
At this point in the story, Reefy has emerged from his isolated existence in a desperate search for love, only to be forced back into isolation once more: he courts a patient of his and eventually marries her, but she passes away the very first spring after their union. Anderson’s use of simile, which identifies Reefy with the cast-over apples left to wither on the branches, points to an important symbol in the Winesburg stories: the physical appearance of a character’s hands, which Anderson uses to comment on the character’s psychological turmoil. In this case, Reefy’s gnarled knuckles remind the reader that he has suffered the brutal effects of alienation and loneliness, despite the genuine warmth in his soul. By placing this final emphasis on the redeeming quality of the apples’ sweetness, Anderson also foreshadows the revelation of Reefy’s goodness, which the reader will come to know through Reefy’s friendship with Elizabeth Willard.
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 Strength of God," Reverend Hartman finds himself consumed by lust for Kate. In a moment of particular situational irony, it is only when Hartman finds Kate naked on his bed that he is able to overcome his lust for her and see her full humanity. Anderson uses a religious simile to convey this transformation:
In the room next door a lamp was lighted and the waiting man stared into an empty bed. Then upon the bed before his eyes a naked woman threw herself. Lying face downward she wept and beat with her fists upon the pillow. With a final outburst of weeping she half arose, and in the presence of the man who had waited to look and not to think thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the lamplight her figure, slim and strong, looked like the figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ on the leaded window.
Suddenly, Hartman is unable to ignore Kate's humanity because of her physical similarity to a Christian boy depicted in some imaginary stained-glass window. By comparing Kate to religious iconography, Hartman casts aside his lust and finds his prayer once again. Faith is a confusing and fickle force in Winesburg, Ohio, and it ultimately leads characters into some sort of sinful temptation at least as often as it helps them recover from such things—but in this case, Hartman's faith appears to save him from himself.
In “An Awakening,” Anderson depicts George’s gradual “awakening” into adulthood. George has newfound inspiration to learn the ways of the world, and Anderson uses a simile to characterize the way that George hopes to learn about law in order to gain the agency he so desperately desires:
The law begins with little things and spreads out until it covers everything. In every little thing there must be order, in the place where men work, in their clothes, in their thoughts. I myself must be orderly. I must learn that law. I must get myself into touch with something orderly and big that swings through the night like a star. In my little way I must begin to learn something, to give and swing and work with life, with the law.
As George searches for meaning, the law—something "orderly and big"—shows him one possible source of purpose. In his simile, Anderson compares the law in all its allure to a bright shining star. Like the North Star itself, the law promises to give George a direction. Then, Anderson changes tact on his device and adopts the metaphorical language of smithing: he expresses his newfound desire to "give and swing and work with life" like some metal or material in a foundry, using the law as his tool.
