Poor White: A Novel

"Poor White: A Novel" by Sherwood Anderson is set in the early 1900s and tells the story of Hugh McVey, a boy from a poor town on the Mississippi River, whose life is filled with neglect and difficulty, mostly because of his father's drinking problem. After becoming an orphan, Hugh starts working at a railroad station, which changes his life; he is taught by the station master's wife, Sarah Shepard, acting as a compassionate guardian and teaching him new things. This help causes him to step away from the laziness that his family and the town have given him, and to envision a more independent life; this part shows how Hugh struggles with who he is, his want to make himself better, and slowly seeing that his life can be more than simply poor, which leads to him later being a separate individual.