Language and morals in Winesburg, OhioLanguage and literature lead parallel lives. What changes most often and most radically is the language we use to describe events and feelings common to all eras. Language changes, stretches, adopts and absorbs - it drops outdated terms and picks up a few new ones, and you don't have to look far to find outdated novels and short stories made from shaky prose and outdated, too many neo. -tropisms, slogans and slang with a short shelf life. Literature, although inseparable from language, endures. Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio summarizes both the changes that have swept the language from 1919 to the present and the persistence of certain themes. The question about language is, ultimately, a question of morals: how do you speak about yourself and others? What can we say and how? The question posed by literature is moral in nature, but it is formulated differently: what about myself and others? The constraints of literature reflect the constraints of language, but the former apply to morality, the latter to manners. Morality, in the broad sense, refers to a sense of decency inherent in everyone. Morals designate the set of constraints, a sort of table of values, that a society imposes on itself and its members. Morality and literature have hardly changed, their central concerns remain the same (man's place in the universe, death, love). , everything else). Mores and language have changed – their central concerns have adapted to the changing times. It is not surprising that morality often comes into conflict with mores (segregation was never moral, but it was, for a time, a plus), and that literature often comes into conflict... . middle of paper...... human being. Winesburg seems less threatening now, mainly due to his language, shyness, and excessive use of euphemisms (particularly the word "adventure", used throughout to refer to a sexual escapade, and Anderson's propensity to shut down eyes on his readers when things get too difficult). hot), not because it is a literary work. Our morals have changed in much the same way. There's a trend these days to explain everything, moles and all, the more explicit the confessional the better, and this trend will most likely pass. Our current mores are fairly consistent with morality – they are, in fact, outward signs that we are moral people – but they are not inflexible. It is through the filters of language and morals that we look at literature and morality. And Anderson's Winesburg seems to be doing well on both counts. He's still standing.