Sherwood Anderson:
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and Elyria, Ohio. In 1912, Anderson had a nervous breakdown that led him to abandon his business and family to become a writer.
At the time, he moved to Chicago and was eventually married three additional times. His most enduring work is the short-story sequence Winesburg, Ohio, which launched his career. Throughout the 1920s, Anderson published several short story collections, novels, memoirs, books of essays, and a book of poetry.
I Want to Know Why
I Want to Know Why" is a short story by Sherwood Anderson from his 1921 collection The Triumph of the Egg.
Here's a summary of "I Want to Know Why",
The narrator and three friends, Henry Rieback, Hanley and Tom Tumberton, all white teenage boys, come to town on a freight train from Kentucky. They head right for the racetrack and stables, where Hanley finds a black man, Bildad Johnson, who works winters with horses in their hometown. He hangs around the stable men and trainers, doing favours and talking about cooking, which he's good at. During racing season, he always gets a job as a cook for some outfit. He's around horses all year, which the narrator envies.
The narrator and the other three boys from Beckersville -Hanley, Henry and Tom- decided they were going to go to the big races in Saratoga, with the narrator being the ringleader. They saved some money and rode freight trains to their destination. They didn't send any letters home for fear someone would come after them. Bildad gets them some food and lets them sleep in a shed. Black people won't turn you in, but white people will. He doesn't know why.
In Saratoga, the boys see adults they recognize from home. Henry's father is a gambler and gives him expensive presents. The narrator's dad's a lawyer, but not really successful. Hanley and Tom's fathers don't like that Henry's is a gambler.
The narrator is writing this story because he's confused about something he saw at the races.He's been crazy about horses all his life. He wanted to be a rider, but got too big. He wants to be a stable boy but his father won't let him. Track horses are beautiful. Many times, he's walked miles in the morning to the track to watch the colts and some older horses run. He can tell which ones are the winners. If he wanted to gamble like Henry's father, he could. The stable boys will come out on the horses and there's the smell of bacon and coffee in the air.
They were in Saratoga six days and didn't get recognized by anyone from home. Bildad gave them some food for the trip back. The narrator's mother was upset but his father didn't say much. He told them everything except the thing he was involved in alone that upset him.
"I Want to Know Why"
At night the boys stayed in the shed and ate with the black stable hands. Before every race, the narrator goes to the enclosure where the horses are kept. On Wednesday two popular horses, Middlestride and Sunstreak, are in the race. The narrator knows their running styles and anticipates the race, as does everyone else. He doesn't want either one to lose. When he sees the horses before the race, he knows it's Sunstreak's day. He can feel the horses energy and knows it will win. The trainer, Jerry Tillford, seems to know too, and he and the narrator recognize the feeling in each other.
The race goes as he thought it would, with Sunstreak winning and Middlestride finishing second. He feels a strong connection to Jerry Tillford, knowing how much work he put into Sunstreak and how proud he must be.
That night, he leaves his friends and wants to spend That night, he leaves his friends and wants to spend some time with Jerry. He walks along the road in the direction he saw Jerry drive off in. Eventually he comes to the farm house, which he knows is a place for bad women. A car pulls up with Jerry, Henry's father, two men from home and two other men he doesn't know. They're drunk and they all go in except for Henry's father.
The narrator sneaks up to the house and looks in a window. The women are ugly and coarse. The place smells terrible and he hears filthy talk. He hears Jerry take the credit for Sunstreak's victory. Jerry looks at one of the women with the shine in his eyes as he had earlier at the track and he kisses her. The narrator regrets coming and wants to kill Jerry. He cries and cuts his hands from clenching his fists. He sneaks back home but can't sleep. He doesn't tell his friends what he saw. They leave the next morning.
It's about a year later, and he's been thinking about it ever since. He still goes to the track at home but it feels different. How could Jerry, who knows what he does about horses, see Sunstreak run like that and kiss a woman like that on the same day? It spoils the whole track experience for him. Why did he do it?
Title: "I Want to Know Why"
"I Want to Know Why," published in the collection The Triumph of the Egg: A Book of Impressions of American Life in Tales and Poems (1921), the fifth book by Sherwood Anderson, reflects the many menial jobs in his youth that familiarised him with the people and procedures of livery and racehorse stables.
A first-person account of a young man who associated truth and beauty with the world of horse racing, in everything about this field, from the way the horses' appearances, the smell of the stables and the people who tend the animals. Not close to his father, he constantly runs away from home and positions Jerry Tilford, a horse handler, as a father figure.
A variation of a journey of initiation, "I Want to Know Why" presents a boy of 15 years teetering on the verge of sexual discovery, suffering a shock to his innocence, and a year later—though he speaks of maturity—being still mystified. The theme, however, is a betrayal of standards rather than a sexual awakening.
Themes:
Theme of Passion:
The narrator's passion for horses is on another level. It is for this reason that he and his three friends escape to go experience horse-racing adventures without permission from their parents.
Additionally, the narrator indicates that whenever he sees horses running he gets a "lump up into his throat." This shows that the narrator has an intense passion for horses. The narrator also depicts the inhabitants of Beckersville as passionate about horses. In his words, he states, "every breath of air you breathe in Beckersville is about horses." He also states that "everything talked about in Beckersville is about horses."
These two statements indicate that people in Beckersville are very passionate about horses. It is due to his passion for horses that the narrator begins to idolise Jerry Tillford, a successful horse trainer.
Theme of Betrayal:
First, the narrator and his three friends betray their parent's trust by escaping without informing them. In an ideal situation, it is expected that children ask for permission from parents before they can travel anywhere. However, this is not the case for the narrator and his three friends. Another instance of betrayal is evident in the instance where the narrator finds Jerry Tillford drunk and in the company of a prostitute.
This is an indicator that reality is far from what he had formerly perceived it to be. The narrator had so much trust in Tilford and had even started to idolise him. It is evident in the story that the narrator had begun to like Tilford more than he even liked his father. However, after the incident at the brothel, the narrator feels betrayed and lost, hence the title of the story: "I Want to Know Why." far-fetched impulses occur with a boy after what he saw.
Reality vs. fantasy:
What the narrator believed at first level and what he saw about Jerry Tillford is coming back to reality rather than what he believed by himself.
At the stage of adolescence, a boy miseries the situation.
And the boy (narrator) keeps musing then...
"I keep thinking about it and it spoils looking at horses and smelling things and hearing riggers laugh and everything. Sometimes I'm so mad about it I want to fight someone. It gives me the fantods. What did he do it for? 1 want to know why.”
Protagonist - Unnamed Narrator
A 15 year-old boy from Kentucky, he recounts the events of the story through the first person reflective narrative; the events in the story occurred one year prior. The character's commitment to learning the sport of race horsing is intense, and at one point he observes that,
I always wanted to be a trainer or owner, and at the risk of being seen and caught and sent home I went to the paddocks before every race. The other boys didn't but I did.
Jerry Tillford - the trainer of the stallion Sunstreak. The narrator quickly develops a familial relationship with Tillford, noting that he "liked him. Even more than I ever liked my own father."
The narrator's father is an attorney. While the reader is never introduced to him except through short descriptions of his personality, he plays a major role in the narrator's psychological complexions. The narrator lacks respect for his father, but doesn't necessarily dislike him.
Several of the narrator's friends are named, but their characters are not fully developed, and we only know they are adolescents from Kentucky who shared an interest in horses, albeit less intense than the narrator. They are Hanley Turner, Henry Rieback, and Tom Tumberton, Dave Williams, Arthur Malford, Bildad Johnson.
Summary in detail:
We got up at four in the morning, that first day in the east. On the evening before we had climbed off a freight train at the edge of town, and with the true instinct of Kentucky boys had found our way across town and to the racetrack and the stables at once. Then we knew we were all right. Hanley Turner right away found a nigger we knew. It was Bildad Johnson who in the winter works at Ed Becker's livery barn in our home town, Beckersville. Bildad is a good cook as almost all our niggers are and of course he, like everyone in our part of Kentucky who is anyone at all, likes the horses. In the spring Bildad begins to scratch around. A nigger from our country can flatter and wheedle anyone into letting him do most anything he wants. Bildad wheedles the stable men and the trainers from the horse farms in our country around Lexington. The trainers come into town in the evening to stand around and talk and maybe get into a poker game. Bildad gets in with them. He is always doing little favours and telling about things to eat, chicken browned in a pan, and what is the best way to cook sweet potatoes and corn bread. It makes your mouth water to hear him.
When the racing season comes on and the horses go to the races and there is all the talk on the streets in the evenings about the new colts, and everyone says when they are going over to Lexington or to the spring meeting at Churchill Downs or to Latonia, and the horsemen that have been down to New Orleans or maybe at the winter meeting at Havana in Cuba come home to spend a week before they start out again, at such a time when everything talked about in Beckersville is just horses and nothing else and the outfits start out and horse racing is in every breath of air you breathe, Bildad shows up with a job as cook for some outfit. Often when I think about it, his always going all season to the races and working in the livery barn in the winter where horses are and where men like to come and talk about horses, I wish I was a nigger. It's a foolish thing to say, but that's the way I am about being around horses, just crazy. I can't help it.
Well, I must tell you about what we did and let you in on what I'm talking about. Four of us boys from Beckersville, all whites and sons of men who live in Beckersville regular, made up our minds we were going to the races, not just to Lexington or Louisville, I don't mean, but to the big eastern track we were always hearing our Beckersville men talk about, to Saratoga. We were all pretty young then. I just turned fifteen and I was the oldest of the four. It was my scheme.
I admit that and I talked the others into trying it. There was Hanley Turner and Henry Rieback and Tom Tumberton and myself. I had thirty-seven dollars I had earned during the winter working nights and Saturdays in Enoch Myer's grocery. Henry Rieback had eleven dollars and the others, Hanley and Tom had only a dollar or two each. We fixed it all up and laid low until the Kentucky spring meetings were over and some of our men, the sportiest ones, the ones we envied the most, had cut out–then we cut out too.
I won't tell you the trouble we had beating our way on freights and all. We went through Cleveland and Buffalo and other cities and saw Niagara Falls. We bought things there, souvenirs and spoons and cards and shells with pictures of the falls on them for our sisters and mothers, but thought we had better not send any of the things home. We didn't want to put the folks on our trail and maybe be nabbed.
We got into Saratoga as I said at night and went to the track. Bildad fed us up. He showed us a place to sleep in hay over a shed and promised to keep still. Niggers are all right about things like that. They won't squeal on you. Often a white man you might meet, when you had run away from home like that, might appear to be all right and give you a quarter or a half dollar or something, and then go right and give you away. White men will do that, but not a nigger. You can trust them. They are squarer with kids. I don't know why.
At the Saratoga meeting that year there were a lot of men from home. Dave Williams and Arthur Mulford and Jerry Myers and others. Then there was a lot from Louisville and Lexington Henry Rieback knew but I didn't. They were professional gamblers and Henry Rieback's father is one too. He is what is called a sheet writer and goes away most of the year to tracks. In the winter when he is home in Beckersville he doesn't stay there much but goes away to cities and deals far away. He is a nice man and generous, always sending Henry presents, a bicycle and a gold watch and a boy scout suit of clothes and things like that.
My own father is a lawyer. He's all right, but don't make much money and can't buy me things and anyway I'm getting so old now I don't expect it. He never said anything to me against Henry, but Hanley Turner and Tom Tumberton's fathers did. They said to their boys that money so come by is no good and they didn't want their boys brought up to hear gamblers' talk and be thinking about such things and maybe embrace them.
That's all right and I guess the men know what they are talking about, but I don't see what it's got to do with Henry or with horses either. That's what I'm writing this story about. I'm puzzled. I'm getting to be a man and want to think straight and be O.K., and there's something I saw at the race meeting at the eastern track I can't figure out.
I can't help it, I'm crazy about thoroughbred horses. I've always been that way. When I was ten years old and saw I was growing to be big and couldn't be a rider I was so sorry I nearly died. Harry Hellinfinger in Beckersville, whose father is Postmaster, is grown up and too lazy to work, but likes to stand around in the street and get up jokes on boys like sending them to a hardware store for a gimlet to bore square holes and other jokes like that. He played one on me. He told me that if I would eat half a cigar I would be stunted and not grow any more and maybe could be a rider. I did it. When father wasn't looking I took a cigar out of his pocket and gagged it down some way. It made me awful sick and the doctor had to be sent for, and then it did no good. I kept right on growing. It was a joke. When I told what I had done and why most fathers would have whipped me but mine didn't.
Well, I didn't get stunted and didn't die. It serves Harry Hellinfinger right. Then I made up my mind that I would like to be a stable boy, but had to give that up too. Mostly niggers do that work and I knew father wouldn't let me go into it. No use to ask him.
If you've never been crazy about thoroughbreds it's because you've never been around where they are much and don't know any better. They're beautiful. There isn't anything so lovely and clean and full of spunk and honest and everything as some race horses. On the big horse farms that are all around our town Beckersville there are tracks and the horses run in the early morning. More than a thousand times I've got out of bed before daylight and walked two or three miles to the tracks. Mother wouldn't let me go but father always says, "Let him alone." So I got some bread out of the bread box and some butter and jam, gobbled it and lit it out.
At the tracks you sit on the fence with men, whites and niggers, and they chew tobacco and talk, and then the colts are brought out. It's early and the grass is covered with shiny dew and in another field a man is plowing and they are frying things in a shed where the track niggers sleep, and you know how a nigger can giggle and laugh and say things that make you laugh. A white man can't do it and some niggers can't but a track nigger can every time.
And so the colts are brought out and some are just galloped by stable boys, but almost every morning on a big track owned by a rich man who lives maybe in New York, there are always, nearly every morning, a few colts and some of the old race horses and geldings and mares that are cut loose.
It brings a lump up into my throat when a horse runs. I don't mean all horses but some. I can pick them nearly every time. It's in my blood like in the blood of race track niggers and trainers. Even when they just go slop-jogging along with a little nigger on their backs I can tell a winner. If my throat hurts and it's hard for me to swallow, that's him. He'll run like Sam Hill when you let him out. If he doesn't win every time it'll be a wonder and because they've got him in a pocket behind another or he was pulled or got off bad at the post or something. If I wanted to be a gambler like Henry Rieback's father I could get rich. I know I could and Henry says so too. All I would have to do is to wait 'til that hurt comes when I see a horse and then bet every cent. That's what I would do if I wanted to be a gambler, but I don't.
When you're at the tracks in the morning–not the race tracks but the training tracks around Beckersville–you don't see a horse, the kind I've been talking about, very often, but it's nice anyway. Any thoroughbred that is sired right and out of a good mare and trained by a man that knows how, can run. If he couldn't, what would he be there for and not pulling a plough?
Well, out of the stables they come and the boys are on their backs and it's lovely to be there. You hunch down on top of the fence and itch inside you. Over in the sheds the niggers giggle and sing. Bacon is being fried and coffee made. Everything smells lovely. Nothing smells better than coffee and manure and horses and niggers and bacon frying and pipes being smoked out of doors on a morning like that. It just gets you, that's what it does.
But about Saratoga. We were there six days and not a soul from home saw us and everything came off just as we wanted it to, fine weather and horses and races and all. We beat our way home and Bildad gave us a basket with fried chicken and bread and other eatables in it, and I had eighteen dollars when we got back to Beckersville. Mother jawed and cried but Pop didn't say much. I told everything we did except one thing. I did and saw that alone. That's what I'm writing about. It got me upset. I think about it at night. Here it is.
At Saratoga we laid up nights in the hay in the shed Bildad had showed us and ate with the niggers early and at night when the race people had all gone away. The men from home stayed mostly in the grandstand and betting field, and didn't come out around the places where the horses are kept except to the paddocks just before a race when the horses are saddled. At Saratoga they don't have paddocks under an open shed as at Lexington and Churchill Downs and other tracks down in our country, but saddle the horses right out in an open place under trees on a lawn as smooth and nice as Banker Bohon's front yard here in Beckersville. It's lovely. The horses are sweaty and nervous and shine and the men come out and smoke cigars and look at them and the trainers are there and the owners, and your heart thumps so you can hardly breathe.
Then the bugle blows for post and the boys that ride come running out with their silk clothes on and you run to get a place by the fence with the niggers.
I always wanted to be a trainer or owner, and at the risk of being seen and caught and sent home I went to the paddocks before every race. The other boys didn't but I did.
We got to Saratoga on a Friday and on Wednesday the next week the big Mulford Handicap was to be run. Middlestride was in it and Sunstreak. The weather was fine and the track was fast. I couldn't sleep the night before.
What had happened was that both these horses are the kind it makes my throat hurt to see. Middlestride is long and looks awkward and is a gelding. He belongs to Joe Thompson, a little owner from home who only has a half dozen horses. The Mulford Handicap is for a mile and Middlestride can't untrack fast. He goes away slowly and is always way back at the half, then he begins to run and if the race is a mile and a quarter he'll just eat up everything and get there.
Sunstreak is different. He is a stallion and nervous and belongs on the biggest farm we've got in our country, the Van Riddle place that belongs to Mr. Van Riddle of New York. Sunstreak is like a girl you think about sometimes but never see. He is hard all over and lovely too. When you look at his head you want to kiss him. He is trained by Jerry Tillford who knows me and has been good to me lots of times, lets me walk into a horse's stall to look at him closely and other things. There isn't anything as sweet as that horse. He stands at the post quiet and not letting on, but he is just burning up inside. Then when the barrier goes up he is off like his name, Sunstreak. It makes you ache to see him. It hurts you. He just lays down and runs like a bird dog. There can't anything I ever see run like him except Middlestride when he gets untracked and stretches himself.
Gee! I ached to see that race and those two horses ran, ached and dreaded it too. I didn't want to see either of our horses beaten. We had never sent a pair like that to the races before. Old men in Beckersville said so and the niggers said so. It was a fact.
Before the race I went over to the paddocks to see. I took a last look at Middlestride, who isn't so much standing in a paddock that way, then I went to see Sunstreak.
It was his day. I knew it when I saw him. I forgot all about seeing myself and walked right up. All the men from Beckersville were there and no one noticed me except Jerry Tillford. He saw me and something happened. I'll tell you about that.
I was standing looking at that horse and aching. In some way, I can't tell how, I knew just how Sunstreak felt inside. He was quiet and letting the niggers rub his legs and Mr. Van Riddle himself put the saddle on, but he was just a raging torrent inside. He was like the water in the river at Niagara Falls just before it plunk down. That horse wasn't thinking about running. He doesn't have to think about that. He was just thinking about holding himself back 'til the time for the running came. I knew that. I could just in a way see right inside him. He was going to do some awful running and I knew it. He wasn't bragging or letting on much or prancing or making a fuss, but just waiting. I knew it and Jerry Tillford, his trainer, knew. I looked up and then that man and I looked into each other's eyes. Something happened to me. I guess I loved the man as much as I did the horse because he knew what I knew. Seemed to me there wasn't anything in the world but that man and the horse and me. I cried and Jerry Tillford had a shine in his eyes. Then I came away to the fence to wait for the race. The horse was better than me, more steadier, and now I know better than Jerry. He was the quietest and he had to do the running.
Sunstreak ran first of course and he busted the world's record for a mile. I've seen that if I never see anything more. Everything came out just as I expected. Middlestride got left at the post and was way back and closed up to be second, just as I knew he would. He'll get a world's record too someday. They can't skin the Beckersville country on horses.
I watched the race calmly because I knew what would happen. I was sure. Hanley Turner and Henry Rieback and Tom Tumberton were all more excited than me.
A funny thing happened to me. I was thinking about Jerry Tillford the trainer and how happy he was all through the race. I liked him that afternoon even more than I ever liked my own father. I almost forgot the horses thinking that way about him. It was because of what I had seen in his eyes as he stood in the paddocks beside Sunstreak before the race started. I knew he had been watching and working with Sunstreak since the horse was a baby colt, had taught him to run and be patient and when to let himself out and not to quit, never. I knew that for him it was like a mother seeing her child do something brave or wonderful. It was the first time I ever felt for a man like that.
After the race that night I cut out from Tom and Hanley and Henry. I wanted to be by myself and I wanted to be near Jerry Tilford if I could work it. Here is what happened.
The track in Saratoga is near the edge of town. It is all polished up and trees around, the evergreen kind, grass and everything painted and nice. If you go past the track you get to a hard road made of asphalt for automobiles, and if you go along this for a few miles there is a road that turns off to a little rummy-looking farm house set in a yard.
That night after the race I went along that road because I had seen Jerry and some other men go that way in an automobile. I didn't expect to find them. I walked for a while and then sat down by a fence to think. It was the direction they went in. I wanted to be as near Jerry as I could. I felt close to him. Pretty soon I went up the side road–I don't know why–and came to the rummy farm house. I was just lonesome to see Jerry, like wanting to see your father at night when you are a young kid. Just then an automobile came along and turned in. Jerry was in it and Henry Rieback's father, and Arthur Bedford from home, and Dave Williams and two other men I didn't know. They got out of the car and went into the house, all but Henry Rieback's father who quarrelled with them and said he wouldn't go. It was only about nine o'clock, but they were all drunk and the rummy looking farm house was a place for bad women to stay in. That's what it was. I crept up along a fence and looked through a window and saw.
It's what give me the fantods. I can't make it out. The women in the house were all ugly mean-looking women, not nice to look at or be near. They were homely too, except one who was tall and looked a little like the gelding Middlestride, but not clean like him, but with a hard ugly mouth. She had red hair. I saw everything plain. I got up by an old rose bush by an open window and looked. The women had on loose dresses and sat around in chairs. The men came in and some sat on the women's laps. The place smelled rotten and there was rotten talk, the kind a kid hears around a livery stable in a town like Beckersville in the winter but doesn't ever expect to hear talk when there are women around. It was rotten. A nigger wouldn't go into such a place.
I looked at Jerry Tillford. I've told you how I had been feeling about him on account of his knowing what was going on inside of Sunstreak in the minute before he went to the post for the race in which he made a world's record.
Jerry bragged in that bad woman's house as I know Sunstreak wouldn't ever have bragged. He said that he made that horse, that it was him that won the race and made the record. He lied and bragged like a fool. I never heard such silly talk.
And then, what do you suppose he did! He looked at the woman in there, the one that was lean and hard-mouthed and looked a little like the gelding Middlestride, but not clean like him, and his eyes began to shine just as they did when he looked at me and at Sunstreak in the paddocks at the track in the afternoon. I stood there by the window–gee!–but I wished I hadn't gone away from the tracks, but had stayed with the boys and the niggers and the horses. The tall rotten looking woman was between us just as Sunstreak was in the paddocks in the afternoon.
Then, all of a sudden, I began to hate that man. I wanted to scream and rush in the room and kill him. I never had such a feeling before. I was so mad clean through that I cried and my fists were doubled up so my finger nails cut my hands.
And Jerry's eyes kept shining and he waved back and forth, and then he went and kissed that woman and I crept away and went back to the tracks and to bed and didn't sleep hardly any, and then next day I got the other kids to start home with me and never told them anything I seen.
I been thinking about it ever since. I can't make it out. Spring has come again and I'm nearly sixteen and go to the tracks mornings same as always, and I see Sunstreak and Middlestride and a new colt named Strident I'll bet will lay them all out, but no one thinks so but me and two or three niggers.
But things are different. At the tracks the air doesn't taste as good or smell as good. It's because a man like Jerry Tillford, who knows what he does, could see a horse like Sunstreak run, and kiss a woman like that the same day. I can't make it out. Darn him, what did he want to do like that for? I keep thinking about it and it spoils looking at horses and smelling things and hearing niggers laugh and everything. Sometimes I'm so mad about it I want to fight someone. It gives me the fantods. What did he do it for? I want to know why.
