What is the awakening of George Willard in "An Awakening" in Sherwood Anderson's collection entitled, Winesburg, Ohio?

In the story entitled, "An Awakening," by Sherwood
Anderson in his collection, Winesburg, Ohio, George Willard awakens
to his potential in life. He becomes caught up in a sense of who he
can be, simply by believing in himself. He speaks words that
transform him and the world around him. He is so strongly convinced of his power, that
he calls at Belle Carpenter's house, who is actually in love with someone else. She goes
out with George, and George believes that his "awakened self" should be able to change
Belle as well, even though he seems to feel that she has not be very nice to him in the
past.

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.

However,
even though an awakening has come to George, it is still in its "infancy." I do not
believe that George embraces strongly enough the things that come into his mind about
being different and perceiving the world in a new way. He is not convinced
enough to alter his world or his sense of who he
is.

In fact, George only begins saying "the
words" because "[i]n a spirit of play…", he is pretending: first to be a drunken man,
then a soldier, and next an inspector of soldiers. The persona he adopts is foreign to
him. The exercise makes him think about what he is saying: he really
should get his life in order.

The
narrator then points out at the beginning of this exercise of "enlightenment," that
George is:

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Hypnotized by his own
words...

This gives the
reader the sense that this change may be temporary. George starts to think about things
that have never occurred to him before, seeing the world through a wider, and new
"lens." Soon he has convinced himself that he is better for knowing
that he can be more, and should expect more of himself. He acts as
if he is committed to his new course when he is alone, in the back alley of a poor
neighborhood. Many of George's thoughts appear to be valuable, with the
potential of being life-changing for him. However, when he is
confronted by the realities of the world in which he lives, he cannot hold fast to his
new sense of self. Because this has been more an awakening of what he
could be, rather than a determination of what
he will be, he folds in on himself when threatened by Ed Handby,
the bartender who wants Belle. (Sadly, it seems she wants him, too, and has only used
George to make Ed jealous.) Three is the "magic" number here. George tries three times
to stand up to Ed, only to be thrown each time into the bushes. That quickly, even in
the face of this new belief in himself, he loses sight of who he
might be.

Ed and Belle leave, and
instead of seeing this as the first battle of his newfound self, he is humiliated. He
returns to the place where he had learned to look at the world with new eyes, but his
sense of failure has robbed him of purpose and shown the reader that he was truly not
committed to changed. The world is ordinary again, as is George's
perception of himself.

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When his way homeward led him again into the
street of frame houses he could not bear the sight and began to run, wanting to get
quickly out of the neighborhood that now seemed to him utterly squalid and
commonplace.

George is
unwilling to stay "true to his dreams."