Wing Biddlebaum

In class we went over some questions about Wing Biddlebaum that I was meaning to bring up during our Socratic Seminar, however I never had the chance (admittedly partially because of my fear to speak in public), and so I would like to discuss my thoughts on Wing here.

First of all, do I believe that Wing was a homosexual?  Well, I'm somewhat conflicted as far as that goes.  I found it extremely interesting that Wing had tried through his gestures to impart the dream into his students (and George Willard) and that the child that accused Wing of molesting him came upon this idea at night in a dream.  The result of his teaching was that, "Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream."  A chance occurrence?  I think not.  While I certainly do not believe that Biddlebaum actually molested that young boy, or had any intention of doing so, I believe that something of himself was imparted with his touch along with what he was trying to teach his students.  However inadvertent in may have been, I believe that Wing's touch revealed his homosexuality to his students in such a subtle way that it would only manifest in their dreams.

I am reasonably sure that Wing, or Adolph Myers as he was known is not a molester, as the book rather explicitly says that the boy made it up:  "A half-witted boy of the school became enamored of the young master. In his bed at night he imagined unspeakable things and in the morning went forth to tell his dreams as facts."  He made up his story, and the only relevant things from his fiction are the time and place of his imaginings.  

Wing is also out first look into grotesques, and he embodies many of the traits that we have come to expect in the others of the novel. He is an outcast from the rest of the town, and is very isolated/lonely, with George Willard being the only character that speaks to him on a regular basis.  Additionally, Anderson often has his grotesques lack a fundamental ability to communicate and interact with others, which is obviously one of the factors in their loneliness.  But ironically, Wing once had the ability to interact with others and express ideas well, but he voluntarily gave that up along with the use of his hands because he believed that it led to the accusations of molestation against him.  Wing's truth is a rather obvious one, his obsession with his hands, and it is by his fervent belief that his expressive hands are the cause of all his suffering, and as a result he hides their use, and when he does use them, refrains from using them expressively and to communicate, as he had, but instead he "closed his fists and beat with them upon a table or on the walls of his house."  It is also this "truth" that sets the stage for the rest of the grotesques presented in the novel, and it is against Wing that we are initially forced to make comparisons.