A Death in the Woods Blog

Option 4

While reading Death in the Woods by Sherwood Anderson it made me think of this one women who walks the Tucson streets. My grandparents live in Tucson and every time we are there a women is walking the streets between the suburban communities and downtown. I never really thought about what her back-story was but after reading the story, I wonder what it is. Is she living along? Is she being forced to walk? Does she have a family? Does anyone else know about her? The first similarity with the story was when the narrator has the same feelings I had “The old women was nothing special. She was one of the nameless ones that hardly anyone knows, but she got into my thoughts.” (Anderson 164)

Mrs. Grimes and this Tuscon women share a lot of similarities, even though this story is fiction I hope that the Tucson women does have a happy life. 

Both of them blend in and no one would notice if they disappeared. The similarity is that both of them walk the roads, but no one ever stops to talk to them. The story talks about how Mrs. Grimes is always holding groceries and the Tucson women always has lots bags with her. The bags look like daily need items, not sleeping supplies, and cans so I assume that like Mrs. Grimes she also has a home.   

  

By the end of the story, Mrs. Grimes becomes a part of the town’s history. Assuming that the narrator is not telling their own story but instead someone else’s makes Mrs. Grimes apart of the oral tradition of the town. The narrator is telling the story years later because he was not satisfied with the way his brother told it “I don’t think he got the point. He was to young and so was I.” (Anderson 174)  I was so interested in this woman that I called my grandparents to see if anyone knew about the women. They said they had heard stories that people have tried talking to her before but she normally says nothing back. A news reporter once tried to interview her but she did not want to be interviewed. Two similarities are the silence and the little information the town knows about both these women.  

The gothic motif of Weather is present in the story. I always remember seeing this woman in the summer months, so temperatures can get above 110 degrees. 

I do not know this women’s name or her story but the similarities between the story and her life that I have seen have me hoping that she is living a fulfilling life. 

Bibliography: 

Anderson, Sherwood. “Death in the Wood.” American Gothic Tales. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New York: The Penguin Group. 163-174. Print.