Winesburg, Ohio: 18. Loneliness Summary & Analysis

Enoch Robinson, a man who grew up on a farm just outside of Winesburg, moves to New York City at twenty-one to attend art school and lives there for fifteen years. Although Enoch is talented and has an eccentric mind that would lend itself to creativity, his lofty plan to study in Paris with the masters never pans out. Enoch is very immature, and his inner child prevents him from fully understanding adult concerns like “money and sex and opinions.”

The narrator points out that Enoch’s story is “the story of a room almost more than it is the story of a man.” When Enoch first arrives in New York, he has several chaotic experiences with alcohol and women that leave him confused. He makes a group of artist friends who come to his room in Washington Square in the evenings to discuss art and smoke cigarettes. Enoch stays silent in the corner during these gatherings, wanting to join the conversation but too excited to speak coherently. He especially wants to explain his paintings on the walls (many of which portray scenes from his old life in Winesburg) that his friends misinterpret.

Enoch becomes so frustrated with his own inability to communicate that he decides he doesn’t need real people and invents imaginary friends instead. Enoch, according to the narrator, is a “complete egoist” like a child, and wants people he can selfishly control and boss around at his whim. But the imaginary friends do not quell Enoch’s loneliness, and soon he gets married to a woman he meets at art school, has two children, and gets a job at an advertising agency.

For awhile, Enoch is serious about playing the role of an adult and tries to be a productive, politically-aware citizen. But he begins to feel trapped by his life and family, lying for an excuse to go out on walks and secretly re-renting his old room in Washington Square. When Enoch’s mother dies and leaves him $8,000, he gives the money to his wife (who is afraid of him and thinks he is insane) and leaves her and their two children. Without his family, Enoch lives happily in his apartment with the company of his imaginary “shadow people.”

Enoch, having returned to his hometown of Winesburg from New York City after fifteen years, decides to tell his story to George Willard. George is apprehensive due to Enoch’s unstable reputation, but Enoch can sense George’s introspective “youthful sadness” and believes that he will understand. Enoch tells George about a female acquaintance in New York whom he wanted to be with but scared away when he had a nervous breakdown and yelled at her. When the woman left, Enoch’s imaginary friends followed her out and he was left with no one. On the way out of Enoch’s room in Winesburg, George hears the man whimpering about being all alone.