Man of Ideas in the Short Story

¶ … Man of Ideas

In the short story "A Man of Ideas," author Sherwood Anderson tells about a young man named Joe Welling. Joe is just another citizen of Winesburg, Ohio and is neither especially talented nor especially intelligent. He works for Standard Oil but does not have a high position in the company. Joe Welling is just a regular working man and this is a situation which bores him. The only thing that makes him stand out at all is his ability to exaggerate, to tell convincing stories, and to involve other people in his fantasies. Welling's story fits into the larger theme of Winesburg, Ohio, that despite living in a small town and performing a service which does not make them special, the people have to become grotesque caricatures of regular people in order to feel unique. The reader sees through Joe's imaginings the difference between how he views things and reality.

Joe has all these big ideas which he explains to anyone who will hear them, including his mother and his girlfriend Sarah King. The relationship Joe has with his mother shows the difference between him and the rest of the community. For example, the narrator describes Joe's mother as "a grey, silent woman with a peculiar ashy complexion" (Anderson 56). It is interesting to note that neither the mother nor Sarah King is described as beautiful. Of Sarah the author writes, "She was tall and pale and had dark rings under her eyes" (Anderson 60). Nor do they have particularly vivacious personalities which would serve to attract a man. This must then be the norm or else, one would assume, that Joe would be more likely to seek out a woman whose personality better matches his own.

Even within the norm of the community, the populous look negatively upon the pairing of Joe and Sarah partly because of her family. Joe's tendency towards exaggeration actually saves him at one point in the story. When Sarah's brother and father come to attack him, he starts telling them about some of his ideas. It is fortuitous that Joe's personality wins them over so thoroughly because Edward and Tom King are known for aggressive, violent behavior and the whole of the town assumes that Joe will be beaten to a pulp by the pair of angry men, but this is not what happens. "As he had swept all men before him, so now Joe Welling was carrying the two men in the room off their feet with a tidal wave of words. The listener in the hall walked up and down, lost in amazement" (Anderson 60). The two of them become so engrossed in his plan that they forget why they had come to visit and do not wind up causing him any harm, proving the strength of a persuasive speaker.

Everyone that Joe meets becomes involved in his imaginings in ways similar to the ones actually described in the story which in turn gives Joe further motivation to continue with his ranting. To the people who inhabit this world, it is Joe's ambitions that make him interesting and therefore it is through these that he gains social importance. Even if they were uninterested in what Joe had to say, they would still be pulled into his orbit by the sheer dominance of his personality while in the midst of a new idea. "Pouncing upon a bystander he began to talk. For the bystander there was no escape" (Anderson 56). This is the kind of person who Joe is.