During the week, we wrapped up Winesburg, Ohio by reading the final stories of the novel.  To my surprise, the ending of the book was relatively happy, as this novel, which almost entirely consists of depressing stories, ends as the beginning of George's journey towards manhood.  Within the story, Sophistication, George meets Helen for the first time in a while when she comes home for the weekend from her college in Cleveland, and they go for a walk down to the edges of the fair ground, where they sit on a decayed grandstand as night settles in.  They kiss briefly, but that impulse gives away to a sudden desire to run about in the darkness, regressing to the level of children at play.  Without the society pressuring the couple to act a certain way, they are able to regress and find themselves while in the moment of playtime.  When the two return from the their privacy, they walk back to town with a dignified fashion, very satisfied with how they spent the night.

By using George's and Helen's regression to innocence as a means of finding themselves as mature adults, Anderson is demonstrating a valuable lesson that adulthood does not always need to be serious. I find this to be a very important lesson because living with the right ratio of seriousness to silliness is a crucial factor to the wellbeing of most people. As high school is nearing an end, we are beginning to prepare ourselves for our lives as adults in the real world, where you need to work hard to be successful and where you are forced to endure social pressures to act a certain way. Many people obesess over these two aspects of adulthood and run themselves into the ground. Although it is important to work hard and act in the right manner, it is essential to not take everything so seriously and assign a certain amount of time to relax and enjoy life, so that life is more entertaining and less stressful.