Here, during the day just passed, have come the people pouring in from the town and the country around. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. “There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going to a fair ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual fair has been held. Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life 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 a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon 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.

From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life.

Suddenly something happens he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. The boy is walking through the street of his town. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. “There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life.

Sherwood anderson winesburg