Winesburg, Ohio- new season

This past week in class, we had our fish bowl discussions about the short-story cycle written by Sherwood Anderson called Winesburg, Ohio. To say the least, the discussions were extremely insightful and gave me ideas regarding the topics that I would have never thought about. Among the short stories discussed were "Paper Pills", "Adventure", "Tandy", "Death", and "Loneliness"; for each of the discussions several comments caught my interest. The particular story that I chose was "Adventure" and in reading deeply into the plot and the characters, I discovered deeper meanings that I would have previously not found possible.
The story "Adventure" seems to be about a typical girl, a rather bland maid named Alice Hindman, whose lover, Ned Currie, left her. During their younger years, the two had "hooked up", but then Ned felt his greater calling in Cleveland and left Alice saying that he would be back when he got some money. After failing in Cleveland, he moved to Chicago where he met some women who attracted his attention and eventually forgot all about Alice...except when he looked at the moonlight. Throughout the whole chapter, this one line bugged me and made me wonder why would he, if he had completely forgotten about Alice, remember her when he glanced at the moon. There is a scene depicted in the chapter where the two met in a field under the moonlight, but it seems too ironic to have a definite importance. Usually, the moonlight combined with a summer night symbolizes a lasting love, but in the story, the love doesn't last for more than a few months, at least in Ned's case. Alice is stuck to her love for years after he has gone constantly obsessing over him in an almost fanatical way. This moonlight scene is very similar to the scene in All the King's Men when Jack and Anne both sit in a roadster in the moonlight professing love for each other only to eventually part ways. The irony is repeated as both loves don't last, but the question of why Ned remembers Alice when looking at the moon persists. Despite the irony presented through the love falling apart, Anderson seems to leave remnants of the previous relationship in the moon, thus supporting the symbolic nature of the moonlight present. This ambiguous nature of the moon as shown in the story can go back to the ambiguous qualities of many of the characters. There is no definite clear cut personality in the whole book. Even Alice, who seems to be the prototypical maid, is different due to her nude adventure in the rain. This ambiguous nature, an ambiguity that can once again be tied in with All the King's Men and Willie Stark, may also contribute to the grotesqueness of the characters in the novel.
Anderson seems to have an uncanny ability to tie together seemingly unrelated stories by giving them certain key similarities that are hidden within the depths of his writing. Ms. Clinch stated her fear that the class may not like one of her favorite novels, but I can assure that the fears are unfounded.