The disorienting experience of coming of age and entering adulthood is one of the central subjects in the stories of Winesburg, Ohio, particularly where George Willard is concerned.
In "An Awakening," toward the end of the collection, George has a particularly profound experience that feels to him like a heightened awareness about the ways of the world—but it is a paradoxical experience, and Anderson uses paradox to highlight the complexity of George's emotion at this transformative stage in his life:
George went into a vacant lot and throwing back his head looked up at the sky. He felt unutterably big and remade by the simple experience through which he had been passing and in a kind of fervor of emotion put up his hands, thrusting them into the darkness above his head and muttering words. The desire to say words overcame him and he said words without meaning, rolling them over on his tongue and saying them because they were brave words, full of meaning. “Death,” he muttered, “night, the sea, fear, loveliness.”
George feels that these "words without meaning" are also "brave words" that are "full of meaning." With this paradox, Anderson navigates the challenges of articulating the feeling of growing up. This strange moment captures the sense of profundity and purpose that can seize someone as they come of age, ultimately speaking to a young person's capacity to find—or make—meaning where there is none (or where it might seem like there is none).
