Symbolism of Paper Pills in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

Introduction: The Paper Pills as Metaphor

In Sherwood Anderson's short story collection Winesburg, Ohio, the story "Paper Pills" focuses on the character of Doctor Reefy and the devastating effects of his ill-fated marriage. The "paper pills" of the title are the small pieces of paper upon which the doctor writes his thoughts and reads to his wife up until her death. Her death ruptures Doctor Reefy's life so that it, just like his pieces of paper, turns inward, eventually transforming into a gnarled, isolated little shell of a life.

By examining the role of the "paper pills" in the story of the same name and the narrator's description of Doctor Reefy's physical appearance, it will be possible to see how these balled-up scraps of paper represent Doctor Reefy himself — both literally and figuratively — and show how he has turned in upon himself following his wife's death. The paper pills represent the doctor because they are literally transcriptions of his thoughts, but they also serve as a visual metaphor for the emotional changes the doctor undergoes, and function as a companion image to the narrator's descriptions of the doctor's weathered, gnarled hands.

Scholarly Perspectives on the Paper Pills

Before addressing how the paper pills and Doctor Reefy's physical appearance inform each other, it will be useful to briefly examine previous scholarship on the paper pills themselves, as these features of the story have been the locus of much scholarly work and require an accurate interpretation. In the essay "Expressionist Contours in Sherwood Anderson's Fiction," Fred Madden (1997) argues that "Doc Reefy believes himself unable to express his thoughts verbally; so he writes them on" the pieces of paper which he then reads to his wife (Madden, p. 366). Madden makes this claim as part of a larger argument surrounding repression and miscommunication in Anderson's work, but it oversimplifies Doctor Reefy's character and thus misses the true role of the bits of paper. Nowhere in the story does Doctor Reefy demonstrate an inability to express himself; indeed, when the tall dark girl who would marry Doctor Reefy first meets him, "for hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her" (Anderson, 1919, p. 21). This demonstrates a nuance to Doctor Reefy's expressive ability that Madden overlooks — a nuance that is important to acknowledge in order to understand how the paper pills function as a metaphor for Doctor Reefy's own life. The doctor is perfectly able to express his thoughts; it is only the partial, ephemeral ideas which he does not speak aloud, at least until he is able to read them to his wife.

Arnold Weinstein (1997), in his essay "The Unruly Text and the Rule of Literature," provides an analysis of the paper pills that remains misguided but nonetheless begins to address them more accurately. Taking his cue from the tooth-pulling scene, Weinstein performs a psychosexual reading of the story and suggests that the "paper balls are irresistible aborts," with Doctor Reefy's incomplete thoughts taking the place of half-formed fetuses (Weinstein, p. 3). While the overall accuracy of Weinstein's claims is dubious — because he relies so heavily on a supposed "displaced narrative" that allows him to connect previously unrelated scenes — his identification of the paper balls as somehow stunted, abbreviated, or unwanted points toward a more accurate analysis of their role in the story.

The proper way of understanding the paper balls in relation to Doctor Reefy is demonstrated in Bill Solomon's essay "The Novel in Distress: A Forum on Fiction" (2010). As part of a larger analysis of Winesburg, Ohio, Solomon notes that Doctor Reefy is one "in a succession of marginalized would-be storytellers," who, "deprived of a listener after the untimely death of his young bride, [...] has no one to read the 'odds and ends of thoughts' he has scribbled on bits of paper," which Solomon sums up by stating that "his medicinal prescriptions will thus alleviate the emotional pain of no patients" (Solomon, pp. 125–126). Combining the sentiments expressed by Weinstein and Solomon, one can see that the paper balls represent unformed, audience-less expression — turned and twisted in upon themselves so that they become hard and alone, just like Doctor Reefy. The text itself offers ample evidence to support this interpretation, as the paper pills recur throughout the story, continually reminding the reader of their importance.

The paper pills are first mentioned when the narrator describes Doctor Reefy's "linen duster with huge pockets into which he continually stuffed scraps of paper," which "after some weeks [...] became little hard round balls, and when the pockets were filled he dumped them out on the floor" (Anderson, p. 19). "On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts," and Doctor Reefy has already established this habit by the time he meets his wife (Anderson, p. 20). After their marriage, the role of the paper pills changes: no longer simply stuffed into a pocket and thrown away, Reefy reads "to her all of the odds and ends of thoughts he had scribbled on bits of paper" (Anderson, p. 23). Even then, however, Doctor Reefy only ever "laughed and stuffed them away in his pockets to become round hard balls" after reading them to his wife.

Conclusion: Isolation and the Necessity of an Audience

In Sherwood Anderson's short story "Paper Pills," the titular objects function as a metaphor for the main character's own experience, and the connection between the two is demonstrated not only in their concurrent inward-turning, self-defeating condensation, but in their actual appearance as well. The narrator compares Doctor Reefy's gnarled hands to the twisted apples of Winesburg, Ohio, which in turn are compared to the bits of paper stuffed into the doctor's pockets. For a brief time, the doctor's wife is able to unfurl the bits of paper, learning their contents while simultaneously softening and untwisting the doctor himself. Her death, however, causes the doctor to turn ever more inward, so that both he and the paper pills are never again able to sustain the fulfillment achieved in the performance of reading their contents aloud. The story highlights the necessity of an audience for any act of expression, because it is reception that ultimately gives that expression meaning. Otherwise, it just gets stuffed into a pocket and thrown away.

Anderson, S. (1919). Winesburg, Ohio. New York, NY: Random House.

Madden, F. (1997). Expressionist contours in Sherwood Anderson's fiction. The Midwest Quarterly, 38(4), 363–371.

Solomon, B. (2010). The novel in distress: A forum on fiction. Novel, 43(1), 124–128.

Weinstein, A. (1997). The unruly text and the rule of literature. Literature and Medicine, 16(1), 1–22.