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21. The Untold Lie
Explanation and Analysis—Hal and Ray:
In "The Untold Lie," Ray and Hal work on a farm outside Winesburg. The two characters function as foils to each other: while they have the same job, they have very different approaches to their work and their lives. Ray is a reserved family man and Hal is a risk-taking, brash young man. As Anderson describes Ray:
Ray was a quiet, rather nervous man of perhaps fifty with a brown beard and shoulders rounded by too much and too hard labor. In his nature he was as unlike Hal Winters as two men can be unlike.
Ray was an altogether serious man and had a little sharp-featured wife who had also a sharp voice. The two, with half a dozen thin-legged children, lived in a tumble-down frame house beside a creek at the back end of the Wills farm where Ray was employed.
And as Anderson describes Hal:
Hal Winters, his fellow employee, was a young fellow. He was not of the Ned Winters family, who were very respectable people in Winesburg, but was one of the three sons of the old man called Windpeter Winters who had a sawmill near Unionville, six miles away, and who was looked upon by everyone in Winesburg as a confirmed old reprobate.
As foils to each other, these differences catalyze the conflict and resolution in their shared story: Ray begins the story in a state of existential angst, because he fears for the opportunities he has lost by getting married and starting a family, while Hal is in the opposite stage of his life and, “reprobate” that he is, has accidentally made a woman pregnant. Ultimately, it is Ray's exposure to Hal and his irresponsible behavior that makes him realize the importance of family and community—and this helps him alleviate his feeling of alienation from his own life and family.
Related Themes:
