Why Paper Pills are so Beautiful

     So I began reading Winesburg, Ohio shortly after finishing Frankenstein, and may I say that it is such a lovely change from all the darkness that we had to endure with Victor and his creature...no more bloodshed, no more horrible human traits and sinful revelations about the human condition (I hope!). But when I read "Paper Pills", the third story in the novel (or collection of short stories, it really depends on the reader), I knew that this story would be one of my favorites, and I'll tell you why: the combined symbolism and allusions that the author employs in this short, 3-page story add up to be bigger than the sum of its parts. It describes a feeling that you couldn't put your finger on; all you can do is just read the story again and get something different from it the second, third, nth time upon reading.

     First, let's start with the heart-wrenching details. The story is about a doctor who marries a beautiful girl, only to see her pass away barely a year after their marriage. What makes this woman so unique is her situation; she seems to break every literary rule in terms of symbolism as described in Foster's book. Both of her parents passed away and "had been a large fertile farm when her father died" (18). You would think that this alludes to the woman's excellent health and ability to have children, right?

Wrong.

Like I said before, she passes away merely a year after marrying Doctor Reefy! Shortly after her parents passed away, she tried desperately to find a man to marry and share her estate with, but these seemingly successful men-- alluded as perfectly round apples, "shipped to cities where they will be eaten in apartments that are filled with books, magazines, furniture, and people" (19)-- just didn't do it for her. Although they seemed perfect and charming on the outside, the woman could see through the false exterior to see the demons that these men had within them. Imagine, all those crookedly-smiling boys you meet and knowing that half of them only want to be with you because they want to exploit you...or worse! That was what she sensed in the men that she encountered--that is, until she met Doctor Reefy.

     Now Doctor Reefy is what Anderson described as the "twisted apple." As if saying so explicitly isn't enough, he has large hands that, when clenched as fists, has popping knuckles that look like...gnarled apples. He is a peculiar sort of doctor, who practices a medicine that is old and becoming obsolete in the present time. It even mentions the fact he wore the same suit for ten years, which suggests that he is stuck in time. Old-fashioned would be the best way to describe him; he writes random thoughts on paper before crumpling them up and stuffing them in his pockets.

     When the two meet, it was under rather odd circumstances; the woman had just walked into Doctor Reefy's office to ask him about her strange, deprecating condition as he was pulling out a woman's tooth. The imagery and symbolism reminds me of a rather rough sex scene, to be quite frank, and yet I don't believe that Reefy and the woman even went that far into their relationship because of her unknown illness. Nevertheless, when the two met, any other notion of meeting other men flew from the woman's mind:

"she was like one who has discovered the sweetness of the twisted apples, she could not get her mind fixed again upon the round perfect fruit that is eaten in the city apartments" (22).

Doesn't that make you sigh contentedly? I certainly did, even though I wouldn't attest to it if you asked me personally. They spent every waking moment with each other, and Doctor Reefy, the once seclusive and mysterious man, opened up his thoughts (literally: he read all the thoughts he wrote down on paper to his wife, to her delight and his joy) until the day she died. Her death is even a slap in the face for symbolist-nerds everywhere; in the fall, the season of harvest and of slowing down, the two get married; in the winter, the season of death and old age, the two spend their happiest months spending time with one another and shared the doctor's thoughts; and in the spring, the season of birth and creation, Doctor Reefy lost the woman he loved to the illness. I guess because she had such a mysterious, unexplainable illness, it defies the normal signs associated with nature and the seasons...but that doesn't make me any less upset about what happened.

But one portion in the end did make the story a lot more bearable (even though it wasn't technically a happy moment...). The last sentence described his happiness at sharing his thoughts to his sick wife during the winter, and how after he finished reading them he'd stuff them into his pockets until they became perfect, round, hard balls. Does this ring a bell??? The perfection of the sphere, formerly associated with the apples, is now used to describe the crumpled pieces of paper that Doctor Reefy wrote on. This sort of connects with the title itself, "Paper Pills"; these half-finished thoughts are the only treatment that can cure Doctor Reefy's loneliness after his wife passes away.

The allusions to perfection and perceived "imperfection" are endless at this point. The perfection of the paper balls may allude to his extreme happiness at sharing his thoughts with his wife, and how his inner being (which is where one finds thoughts, after all) was perfect, even though on the outside he had large hands and gnarled knuckles. These crumpled balls of thoughts also may refer to the "perfect" love he had with his wife, and how this memory is forever engrained within the round spheres of the paper wads. His physical imperfections didn't stop the beautiful girl from falling love with what was inside of the doctor, which was his warm, caring heart and his wonderful thoughts. The townspeople often wondered why that affluent girl left such a large portion of her wealth to the odd doctor with the odd knuckles, but to me it made perfect sense. "Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples."