There's No Escaping Winesburg

                 The final story is a fitting end to the story of Winesburg, Ohio. It is appropriately named Departure because George Willard has decided to leave Winesburg. His departure takes place in the month of April. This of course is not a coincidence because the month of April is generally thought of as  the month of spring and rebirth. By leaving Winesburg, George himself is going to be reborn and go off into the rest of the world for the first time. Another interesting thing that happens in this story is that all of the towns people come by George to wish him farewell.  This is very similar to the very beginning of the story in The Book of the Grotesque, where the old author, who we know is George Willard himself, sees these images of people passing in front of his person. This idea that the beginning is similar to the end of the story, does a nice job of tying the book together and giving it a completed sense.

                One small detail that I overlooked while first reading Departure was the quote about George and his father. It said "The son had become taller than the father"(Anderson 245). At first, I only thought of this detail in the physical sense; George had simply grown taller than his father, that often happens. But what’s more important here is the deeper meaning of this quote. George may be physically taller than his father, but more importantly, George is above his father in more than one way because unlike his father, George is going to leave Winesburg and potentially be more successful than his own father. Things didn't exactly go the way his father anticipated; however he is still, and forever will be, trapped in Winesburg.

                Finally, even though George has left Winesburg, we know that he hasn't completely been separated from the town. The final lines of the book read "the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood"(Anderson 247). Although George is no longer physically in Winesburg, we know that his memories and experiences from the town and its very interesting people will heavily influence the rest of his life. This shows that nobody can truly escape the town of Winesburg, Ohio.