27 pages • 54 minutes read
Sherwood AndersonDeath in the Woods
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1924A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Imagery
After the hunter tells of his discovery of the old woman’s body in the woods, Sherwood Anderson describes the cause of his misunderstanding in what he found:
In a woods, in the late afternoon, when the trees are all bare and there is white snow on the ground, when all is silent, something creepy steals over the mind and body. If something strange or uncanny has happened in the neighborhood all you think about is getting away from there as fast as you can (Part 4, Paragraph 9).
Anderson’s description of the isolation of the woods lends an air of discomfort to the reader, made even more poignant by that fact that the trees are barren (without life-giving force) and snow dampens the sounds of life that might normally permeate the woods. The imagery of the woods mirrors Mrs. Grimes’s isolation and furthers the idea that the crone is a trope to be both feared and revered.
Tone
The tone is one of remembrance and reflection. The narrator recounts a defining moment of his life that is also a tragedy for the protagonist, the old woman. As he tells the story in a non-linear way, he seems to be putting pieces of it together as he goes along. By the end of the story, he makes this clear by telling his readers he is doing so, stating “The whole thing […] was to me as I grew older like music heard from far off. The notes had to be picked up slowly one at a time. Something had to be understood” (Part 5, Paragraph 12). This story is important to him, but he hasn’t quite figured out all the reasons for it. He just knows that other tellings of it aren’t comparable.
Setting
Like many of Anderson’s stories, the setting of a small town clearly distinguishes this from the industrialized setting of cities. These are places that still cling to some traditions and have a stubbornness to evolve with the new times. The old woman, therefore, is a common sight, mentioned as so in the very first paragraph. People like her have not embraced any of the progressive changes of the Industrial Revolution, and in her case, are still victims of an old mindset (sexism and old-fashioned gender roles in her case). As opposed to the growing cities of asphalt and steel of her time, she is closer to nature as the grounded feeder of her farm, and it is no surprise that her death occurs in a state of nature in the middle of the woods.
Point of View
Readers learn of the events of this story through first-person unreliable narration. The narrator tells the story of the old woman from his perspective, which he admits is slightly altered to fill in the potential gaps in information. The reader must navigate the story and determine what is potentially accurate and what is not. The narrator is especially unique in this case because he gives the reader an idea of how stories are created artistically. Anderson was not a fan of plot-based stories but rather ones that focus on characterization. “Death in the Woods” has a simple plot, but it is the characters that make the story.
Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition involves side-by-side comparison of two or more different things, usually to show the distinct differences in both. In “Death in the Woods,” an example of this is present in the scene with the town butcher, whose interaction with Mrs. Grimes is unlike any other in the story. She is treated poorly throughout her life, and is at best ignored, but there is a stark contrast between her relationships with everyone else in the story versus the town butcher. He is the only person who shows respect to the old woman in the story, and this stands out even more in consideration to the rest of her life.
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By Sherwood Anderson
