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PARTISAN REVIEW
the greatest fiction-has
additional
levels of meaning which must be
communicated unconsciously. In many cases far more
is
communi–
cated unconsciously than consciously. Even when this is not the case,
the meanings grasped below the threshold of awareness may make
a disproportionate contribution to the pleasure we receive from read–
ing fiction.
It may be worth while to analyze a story which is perfectly
comprehensible to the intellect but has many further levels of mean–
ing. Let us glance, therefore, at Sherwood Anderson's story, "I Want
to Know Why." It has many interesting points of similarity and
contrast with "My Kinsman, Major Molineux." And as it happens,
the story has been analyzed by Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn
Warren, so that once again we have a jumping-off point for our own
explorations.
I shall assume that my readers are familiar with the story, and
simply remind them of its chief events. It is narrated in the first
person by its fifteen-year-old hero, whose name we never learn. A boy
from Beckersville, Kentucky, a small town evidently in the blue-grass
region, he is "crazy about thoroughbred horses" ; to him they epit–
omize everything which is "lovely and clean and full of spunk and
honest." A lump comes into
his
throat when he sees potential winners
run. He knows he could capitalize on this physical reaction if he
wanted to, but he has no desire to gamble; horses and racing repre–
sent something too important to him for that.
With three friends of about his own age, the boy runs away to
attend the races .at Saratoga. Bildad, a Negro from the same town
who works at the tracks, feeds the boys, shows them a place to sleep
and keeps still about them, which the hero seems to appreciate most
of all.
The race the boys particularly want to see has two entries that
give the hero a lump in his throat, and the night before it
is
run he
is so excited he cannot sleep. He aches to watch the two horses run,
but he dreads it too, for he hates to see either one beaten. The day
of the race he goes to the paddocks to look at the horses. As soon
as he sees one of them, Sunstreak, a nervous and beautiful stallion,
who is "like a girl you think about sometimes but never see," the boy
knows that it is his day. Watching, he experiences a mystical com–
munion with the horse and the horse's trainer, a man named Jerry
