Winesburg, Ohio: 21. The Untold Lie Summary & Analysis

Ray Pearson and Hal Winters are laborers on the Wills farm outside of Winesburg who come into town to socialize on the weekends. Ray is a quiet, serious, and nervous man with a wife and six children, while Hal is young and irresponsible. Hal’s father was killed in a dramatic train accident that was the envy of young boys in Winesburg who romanticized living and dying gloriously. Hal was the worst behaved of his brothers growing up, often getting into mischief like stealing and getting drunk. A known womanizer, he goes to work on the Wills farm because he is interested a country schoolteacher who lives nearby.

One October day, Ray and Hal are joking with each other as they husk corn in a field. Ray, who is more sensitive than Hal, is in a bad mood and becomes emotional at the beautiful autumnal scenery that surrounds them. As a young man, he had enjoyed wandering around introspectively in the woods. Ray suddenly realizes that the entire course of his life had been influenced by asking a girl (who would become his wife) to join him on a walk. He becomes indignant at this realization, believing that God trapped him in his role as a husband and father.

Hal questions whether or not marriage has been worthwhile for Ray and reveals that he has gotten a girl named Nell Gunther pregnant. Hal asks for the older man’s advice, wondering if he should “harness” himself to the girl and risk being “worn out like an old horse.” Ray knows that (based on his personal values and those of his community) he should tell Hal to marry Nell but he cannot manage to say so. Looking at the gorgeous countryside, Ray has an inexplicable desire to scream or hit his wife and cannot make sense of what has come over him.

After a day’s work, Ray’s wife good-naturedly scolds him for puttering around the house and asks him to get some groceries for supper. Walking toward town at sunset, Ray becomes overwhelmed by the natural beauty, throws off his coat, and runs through a field. He cries out, asking why he or any other man should owe anything to women who willingly enter relationships with them. Ray decides that he will find Hal before he gets to town and tell him not to marry Nell.

Running to catch Hal, Ray reflects upon the traveling and life goals that he sacrificed when he married his wife. He imagines his own children clutching at Hal and is desperate to warn the younger man that children are accidents which men have “nothing to do with.” By the time he reaches Hal, Ray has lost sense of these thoughts altogether. Hal tells him that Nell does not want to marry him after all, and Ray laughs with him before turning back. On the walk home, Ray recalls pleasant evenings spent with his children and realizes that telling Hal not to marry Nell “would have been a lie,” anyway.