Here in my final installment of my trip through Winesburg, Ohio, I’m going to cover the last two stories in the book: “Sophistication” and “Departure.” In both stories, the main character is George Willard. There are at least ten stories that I have not included in this literary series, but hopefully you are intrigued enough by these posts to purchase and enjoy the entire book.
Sophistication: An Overview
The focus of “Sophistication” is George’s final meeting with Helen White, the banker’s daughter whom George is obviously in love with, or at least deeply attracted to. It was the late fall and the Winesburg County Fair was in full swing. George, though, was waiting in the stairway that led to Dr. Reefy’s office, waiting for a glimpse of Helen White in the crowd. By this time, George had determined to leaven Winesburg and start his life elsewhere, but being a young man, he was also feeling lonely. As he was starting into manhood, with all his forward-looking hopes and dreams, there also came fear and reluctance to start a new life. His feeling is described in the following way:
[As he looks out on the world] “seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness and sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely as a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.”
With that sobering realization about life, George wanted a woman, because a woman might understand him, and more than anything, he yearned for understanding. For that reason, he was longing for Helen White. And, it turned out, Helen was thinking about George. They shared a walk in the country earlier that summer and a few sparks were kindled. George had told her he was planning big things for himself, but it was also an awkward time together. Now in the fall, George worked up the nerve to go to Helen’s house to walk her to the Fair Ground as the activities were winding down for the evening.
The story’s description of both George and Helen that night is beautifully strange, but true. Everyone can relate to it. First, there is a commentary about youth: “In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers, and the older the more sophisticated thing”—that sophisticated thing had taken possession of George that night. Second, there is a sad commentary on the people at the fair: “On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people.” The fair was full of life, but by the end of it, all the life had gone away, and one was faced with the apparently meaningless of life, and how everything passes by so quickly.
In this moment, we are told that George wanted to love and to be love by Helen, and they cuddled there on the bench on which they were sitting. Both of them had the same thought: “I have come to this lonely place and here is the other.” Both felt lonely and uncertain of their future, and they found a connection in that loneliness. From time to time they kissed, and then kissed more on the walk home. In that awkward, embarrassed feeling that young people often have in that situation, that resorted back to when they were younger and started playing around and running, tripping and rolling down a hill. Eventually George took her home. The story ends this way: “For some reason they could not have explained they had both got from their silent evening together the thing needed. Man or boy, woman or girl, they had for a moment taken hold of the thing that makes the mature life of men and women in the modern world possible.”
Sophistication: My Thoughts
The fact is, nothing really happens in “Sophistication.” There’s no real plot line, story, rising action, climax, or denouement. George and Helen go for a walk in the fall, in the evening, hardly say much to each other the entire time, let a little intimate with each other, then on the way home act a little like kids again. That’s it. So, what’s the point?
I think the story encapsulates that time in life when one is about to really “graduate” from the life of one’s youth into the adult world—that uneasy, hopeful, but awkward tension when both your hopes and fears of the future merge into one, when you’re anxious to be an adult but still feel like a kid…and all you really want is to hold the hand of someone who understands what you’re feeling and loves you in that moment of longing and loneliness.
The imagery of the people at the County Fair—or more specifically, the empty County Fair after the people have left—is a sobering metaphor for so much of our lives. All the activities and feelings of community one might experience at a County Fair are soon over. The same holds true of our lives. So much in life is fleeting and whether we realize it or not, most of our lives are, in fact, like a leaf being blown in the wind. That is why we are drawn to intimate relationships. We fumble our way into most of them, but we try nonetheless because we, like George, are searching for understanding…for someone who understands us.
The fact is most of our relationships amount to not much more than George and Helen’s evening walk after the County Fair and soon are over. But those evening walks leave an impression, and although they live on in only our memories, those experiences make us who we become…and that is lasting.
Departure: An Overview
The final story in Winesburg, Ohio is the story of George Willard’s departure from Winesburg. It’s extremely short. It was April, and on the morning George was to leave, he “was thinking of the journey he was about to take and wondering what he would find at the end of his journey.”
At 7 o’clock in the morning, George and his father Tom left the Willard House to go to the train station. “The son had become taller than the father.” When the train arrived, George hopped on board, ready to go. It just so happened that Helen White came running down Main Street to the station to have one last word with George, but he had already gotten on board and taken his seat—he did not see her.
Once the train left the station, George looked around to make sure no one was looking and then opened his pocketbook and counted his money. He didn’t want to appear too naïve and green to anyone. The last piece of advice Tom had given George was not to do anything that would make anyone think you’re a greenhorn.
We are told that as the train was moving out of town George began to think, but not of anything big or dramatic regarding what his new adventure lay in store for him. He didn’t think the larger things in his life: of his mother’s death, his leaving Winesburg, or the uncertainty regarding what was to come. Instead, he found himself thinking of the little things from Winesburg: “Turk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed overnight at his father’s hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope.” Simply put, he was thinking of all the small things of his life in Winesburg that made him into the person he now was. They were the small, seemingly insignificant things that make up one’s life.
The story ends with George dozing off to sleep on the train: “He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window, the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood.”
Departure: My Thoughts
As I think of the few times in my younger years when I went through a drastic change in my life, I can totally relate to this snapshot of George leaving Winesburg—that feeling of excitement and adventure, the apprehension and fear of uncertainty, and the melancholic memories of a life you know you will never be able to really go back to. They all get balled up together as you try to bring your former life to conclusion and start up your new life at the same time.
I had these feelings when I first went off to Northwest Missouri State University in 1989—the first time I had ever left home. A few years later in 1993, I joined the Peace Corps, left the country, and went off to Kazakhstan—another major life change. After the Peace Corps, in 1995 I left for Regent College in British Columbia. In 1997, I left Regent to take my first full-time teaching job in Fremont, California. For me, these for life-changing experiences brought that same kind of excitement, uncertainty, and apprehension of the life I was headed toward, and the same kind of reminiscing of the life I was leaving. After that, the moves I’ve made since have been different—once you gain a certain amount of maturity and perspective, those life-changes aren’t as dramatic. Still, when I think of those early life-changes during my teens and twenties, they carry with them a significance that has forever impacted my life.
As you can tell, I love Winesburg, Ohio. There is something in almost every character I can relate to in some way or another—not every character, but most: being misunderstood and hurt like Wing Biddlebaum; being overlooked and thoughtful, like Doctor Reefy; having feelings of defeat and regret like Elizabeth Willard; ehh…not so much with Doctor Percival; George’s fumblings with girls; feelings of lost love and having missed out on love like Alice Hindman; the temptation to become a bitter angry man like Wash Williams; dealing with inner lusts while maintaining a “good reputation” like Curtis Hartman; or feelings of loneliness and not being able to make any close connections with people, like Kate Swift.
I think that is the genius of Winesburg, Ohio. Each one of these characters probably feels like they are all alone in their struggles—those feelings of isolation, regret, lust, hatred, etc. are things we all feel, and things that all make us think we are alone. But the fact it, there is a commonality in our humanity, and although we may feel lost and alone, we all—whether we realize it or not—share in those feelings. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a lasting, intimate, loving relationship that sustains us throughout our lives. Some will only have glimpses and tastes of that kind of love, while others will be hurt and burned, and still others will miss out completely. We must remind ourselves, though, even when we are lost and lonely, and even if we get hurt and burned by our own bad choices, we still have the ability to choose again. Bad choices might derail our lives for a time, but when the chance presents itself, we all, like George Willard, can choose to get on the next train and move on, forever hoping, despite our fear and apprehension, that a new life awaits us, if we have the courage to move forward.
Still our past will always be with us–it will always be the backdrop to our new life, for it is the thing that has made us who we are today, and who we will be tomorrow.
