Winesburg, Ohio: Paper Pills Analysis

    Paper Pills is the story of Doctor Reefy and his late wife. The story has many themes, allusions, and ideas within it. One of the first things shown about Doctor Reefy are his hands which “looked like clusters of unpainted wooden balls as large as walnuts fastened together by steel rods” (9). This image of the wooden balls parallels the paper balls that he stuffs in his pockets and then empties after enough have been accumulated. The paper balls represent the heavy thoughts that the doctor thinks and carries around with him that weigh him down, much like his hands. The doctor has the tendency to take thoughts from the air and turn them into truths. These truths then get put down on paper and then put into his pocket. After a while the doctor must pour out these truths as they have become distorted and too dominant and risk turning him into a grotesque. The twisted apples have two meanings. They are metaphors for the twisted truths that the doctor creates. The thoughts begin whole but over time they become distorted and lose their original meaning. The apples can also be an allusion to the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Eve ate the forbidden fruit and gained knowledge but in turn was kicked out of paradise. The twisted apples are like that in the fact that they are sweet and provide truths for the doctor but ultimately keep him from doing anything. The tall dark girl can also be considered a twisted apple in a sense. She is violated by one of her suitors but contains a sweetness, a hidden truth, that the doctor finds for himself in her. After her death he loses the truth that he found in her and is doomed to be alone in his abandoned office. This is shown when “He smoked a cob pipe and after his wife’s death sat all day in his empty office close by a window that was covered with cobwebs. He never opened the window. Once on a hot day in August he tried but found it stuck fast and after that he forgot all about it” (9). The doctor has become stuck. He is in his office and has become merely an observer who is doomed to nothingness. He is left to dream of truths that can never come to fruition. The one time he tried to do something about his position he found an obstacle in his way and could not overcome it so gave up and resigned to his life of an observer. The story also is about alienation and loneliness. The doctor has all these thoughts that way him down and he has no one to share them with. When he finally finds someone who he can open up to she quickly perishes and he is back to square one with no one with whom he can confide. Even with his only friend he cannot confide in him and throws some paper balls at him and even says “That is to confound you, you blithering old sentimentalist” (10). This shows that he attempts to share his feelings with him but cannot bring himself to do it.