An Awakening by Sherwood Anderson, 1918
The magic trick:
Cleverly showing George Willard both to be growing wiser but still easy to manipulate
We begin a third (and final) week of stories from Winesburg, Ohio.
It’s difficult to analyze “An Awakening” without the context of the other stories in the collection. Certainly, this is one that makes the case for Winesburg as a novel. We find George Willard again (he’s featured in several Winesburg stories) sorting through his thoughts and feelings.
The story does an excellent job of keeping him young and dumb. He starts to have some big thoughts about some big ideas. It’s as if in one drunken night, he is growing up into an adult. And the narration is very clear about how he feels and what his intentions are. Cleverly, it’s less clear about what intentions Belle Carpenter has. We get some idea, but it’s not direct.
In doing so, we see both things at once – that George is taking on a maturity that perhaps places his ambitions beyond those of this town, while also seeing that he still is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.
And that’s quite a trick on Anderson’s part.
The selection:
George Willard came out of the vacant lot and stood again on the sidewalk facing the houses. He felt that all of the people in the little street must be brothers and sisters to him and he wished he had the courage to call them out of their houses and to shake their hands. “If there were only a woman here I would take hold of her hand and we would run until we were both tired out,” he thought. “That would make me feel better.” With the thought of a woman in his mind he walked out of the street and went toward the house where Belle Carpenter lived. He thought she would understand his mood and that he could achieve in her presence a position he had long been wanting to achieve. In the past when he had been with her and had kissed her lips he had come away filled with anger at himself. He had felt like one being used for some obscure purpose and had not enjoyed the feeling. Now he thought he had suddenly become too big to be used.
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