Theme of alienation in the select short stories of sherwood Anderson

The most recurrent and the most impressive theme of Anderson which appears virtually in all his works is human loneliness and isolation. Anderson explores this theme with particular reference to the American society of his times. However, experience of loneliness is as old as man and known to mankind from times immemorial. But at no time in human history it was as widespread and pervasive as it is in modern times. Today throughout the world we are familiar with lonely crowds, loneliness in crowds, anonymous and lonely existence in crowded towns and cities. In the world of letters, there is hardly a writer worth the name in the West or East, who is not anguished over it.