“Hands” is a short story written by Sherwood Anderson, which tells us about a lonely elderly man, who lives in a little town of State of Ohio called Winesburg. He lives alone, he doesn’t communicate with anybody but one young man, though their communication stops soon after. The author gives a thorough description of the way in which Wing Biddlebaum moves his hands while talking with the man, which from the first sight seems unimportant to the reader. But it is not so. Wing Biddlebaum’s hands are his main feature, which played a great role in his life. I’m not going to retell the story, but it’s necessary to speak about some peculiarities of it. “Hands” is a typical short story by Sherwood Anderson, who often described people’s suffering and unhappiness. All his main characters have a lot of difficulties in life, which often can be associated with his own life, because the author himself experienced some rather serious hard times during his life-time.


The main idea shown in the story is misunderstanding of tactile contacts and consequences of it. Wing Biddlebaum being a teacher had a lot of young students, whom he tried to teach to be self-confident and to have an ability to dream, “Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream” (Anderson). He was very enthusiastic teacher that’s why he used to speak very passionately about his ideas and very often touched his student’s heads and shoulders. Obviously he only wanted them to understand him in a better way, to make his words touch his students’ hearts and souls, to give them a part of him. Unfortunately, we live in different times, and many things that used to be normal long time ago are nowadays treated as abnormal and immoral. Of course nowadays if a boy or a man is touched by a person of the same sex might think that it means something more than it really does, and usually such actions are treated as ones which are out of the common run. That might be a good explanation for what happened in the story. In order to express such ideas in his story the author uses a subtle psychological approach. It’s well-known that people who use gesticulation a lot achieve more success with attracting listeners to what they are saying. When Wing Biddlebaum was speaking his hands were always moving in order to express his words in a better way. He even became a sort of celebrity in his town because of his hands and gestures, “In Winesburg the hands had attracted attention merely because of their activity. With them Wing Biddlebaum had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. They became his distinguishing feature, the source of his fame” (Anderson). However, Biddlebaum’s hands were not only good at gestures. The last quotation from the story shows that his hands were also good at working. But of course, a very unique feature of this man was that he was able to talk with his hands, to express he thoughts. Because of the incident that happened in his life with one of his students, he became afraid of his hands. That’s why he always tried to hide them in the pocket or behind his back, or kept closed fists. Here’s how it happened. Unfortunately one of his young students misunderstood his master when the latter touched his head and shoulders. The whole town got to know about it, and Biddlebaum had to escape after he had been severely beaten up. This could have been avoided if the boy wasn’t as the author noticed himself “half-witted” and understood everything correctly. Since then Wing Biddlebaum felt sort of paranoia about his hands and was always afraid that this might happen again. This was the reason why he had to finish so abruptly his conversation with George Willard, because of the unconscious movements of his hands, “Again he raised the hands to caress the boy and then a look of horror swept over his face” (Anderson).

To make a conclusion I’d like to say the following. In this short story the author shows how certain advantages of a person can become his drawbacks and lead to undesirable consequences. The majority of people are sure that correct usage of gestures is a great talent, and that speakers who have this talent must feel very lucky, because it’ll help them attract more listeners. I cannot do anything but agree with it. Though the author shows that being an advantage active usage of gesticulation and tactile contacts may be misunderstood and lead to some rather complicated situations. After the incident Wing Biddlebaum had to change his name, and he became very reserved and stopped communicating with any other people. At the end of the story he even compared with a priest that is trying to teach some good things to people with his hands but unfortunately it’s all in vain.

Bibliography:

1. Sherwood Anderson “Hands”

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