On the literary map, travel from Detroit, Michigan, to Clyde, Ohio.Calculate:
# _____________ Miles to Clyde, Ohio.
$ _____________ Cost for Gasoline to Clyde, Ohio.
Read about in your text or at Sherwood Anderson. His most famous work is Winesburg, Ohio .
Now read "Sophistication" and answer these questions:
"Sophistication" is a story of two people caught between adolescence and maturity. George and Helen strain toward a new awareness of life while they are still bound to the familiar life of Winesburg. What reasons are given in the fourth paragraph for George's "new sense of maturity"?
The fifth paragraph describes the moment of sophistication, when a person first takes "the backward view of life." Anderson uses the image of a passing procession to suggest George's vision of the passing of time. What image does the author use to suggest the feelings of helplessness and uncertainty that accompany sophistication?
The author describes youth as a struggle between two forces: "the warm unthinking little animal" and "the thing that reflects and remembers (Adventures in American Literature 466). Find a few instances in the story of the sturggle between these two forces. What do you think Anderson means by this conflict?
At the end of the story, what do George and Helen gain from their silent evening together that "makes the mature life of men and women in the modern world possible"? What do you think George and Helen give up of their youth to gain this new-found sophistication?
