Discuss the maturation of George Willard throughout the book called Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson.

George Willard, the most prominent and often recurring
character in Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, matures in the midst of
the various encounters he has with other characters throughout the course of the story.
In some of the stories comprising Winesburg, Ohio, George's lessons
on the way to maturity come through direct experience such as in "Nobody Knows" in which
George learns the double meaning of the phrase "nobody knows": It can be used as a tool
of persuasion to encourage behavior (either good or bad behavior, if you think about it)
and it can also provide a cloak for or protection from secret (good or bad) behavior,
which is what George discovered:

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[George] stopped whistling and stood perfectly
still in the darkness, attentive, listening as though for a voice calling his name. Then
again he laughed nervously. "She hasn't got anything on me. Nobody knows," he muttered
doggedly and went on his
way.

One significant aspect
on the way to George's maturity is his encounters with Helen White. In one encounter,
recorded in "Sophistication," George and Helen both learn to recognize their own
identity by sharing a moment of mutual recognition of each other. They realize an
affinity of similarity between themselves that is expressed by the thought that "I have
come to this lonely place and here is this other."

In other
stories, characters or the narrator tell George their experiences in life from which
George may--or may not--learn a maturing life lesson. Some of the lessons George learns
rightly though some, as in "Nobody Knows," he may learn backwards or not at all--some
are lessons he should not learn. An example of such a lesson in maturity that comes from
another character is in the story of Doctor Parcival whose obsessive ideas prevent him
from acting normally or rightly as in when he refuses to go to a child who was fatally
thrown from a buggy in "The Philosopher." Parcival's terror at the anticipated reaction
of the townspeople to his callousness leads him to utter what he obsessively thinks a
great lesson for George:

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everyone in the world is Christ and they are all
crucified. That's what I want to say. Don't you forget
that.

The final step in
George's maturation comes after the death of his mother, which is recorded  in "Death,"
when he finally fulfills his dream--and his mother's hope (though not an unconflicted
hope)--of leaving Winesburg in “Departure.” The story ends when Winesburg fades from
George's life as the train carrying to the remainder of his manhood pulls out of
Winesburg and “his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams
of his manhood.”