Short Story I WANT TO KNOW WHY by Sherwood Anderson

Short Story I WANT TO KNOW WHY by  Sherwood Anderson

Adolescent stage is a very significant in everyone's life. It is the duration after childhood before Adulthood. It is a strange stage of life where a person is generally governed by dreams, passion and ideas. Many leading writes like Dickens, Narayan, Bond, and Tagore have highlighted some aspects of this stage in their fiction.

The most obvious stylistic device in this story is Sherwood Anderson’s use of the first-person narrative voice. The naïve speaker finds it difficult to tell his story; he fumbles for the right word, the accurate description.

Sherwood Anderson 's story I WANT TO KNOW WHY also highlights the world of teenager. In the present story he depicts how a teenager boy's ideal person turns from hero to zero.

The setting of the Story is Home town of narrator, Backerswille. The narrator of the Story depicts the frustration of an adolescent who is highly shocked &disappointed to find his model person, ideal to be an ordinary human being. The Story disturb and confuses the young boy at the end as he realize that people aren't always as good as they seem. So what it means? It means that very difficult to find original face of Human being, why many of the people who have artificiality in their nature.

 Here in this story innocent boy who is in search of something that would be like ideal. There is also some symbolism in the story which may be important. To the narrator the horses represent or symbolize everything that is good in the world. 

“I Want to Know Why” can be compared to “Death in the Woods” (and numerous other Anderson stories) in its rendering of sexual awakening and confusion. here  ending of the story is also interesting as it becomes clear to the reader that despite becoming aware of the realities of life. There is also a sense that the narrator is innocent of human nature and a person’s need or desire to impress others. This is noticeable by Tillford’s bragging and attributing Sunstreak’s success to himself rather than to the horse. 

Any innocent face more governed by sentiments, passion rather than Understanding.