…as if the suffering Stingo whom I once inhabited, or who once inhabited me, learning at firsthand and for the first time in his grown-up life about death, and pain, and loss, and the appalling enigma of human existence, was trying physically to excavate from that paper the only remaining—perhaps the only bearable—truth.

This quotation takes place in Chapter Sixteen as Stingo reflects on the state he was in immediately following the deaths of Nathan and Sophie. It occurs when an older Stingo is looking back at some notes and journals he wrote and shows the gap between who Stingo was at the time and the man he subsequently grew into. Stingo as the narrator communicates this distinction by speaking about his former self in the third person and describing his earlier self as someone who had “inhabited” him. The narrator emphasizes how Stingo was a very young man who was just starting to reckon with maturity by commenting on “his grown-up life.” This comment makes explicit that throughout the plot up to this point, Stingo has been naïve, reckless, and sheltered. This comment is important because as a young man, Stingo takes himself very seriously and tries to insist on his maturity and worldliness. All of his pretense of being grown up is undermined by the narrator’s comments about Stingo only truly growing up when he has to confront death and loss.

This quotation reveals the grown-up Stingo’s maturity as well as his bittersweet worldview. Stingo as the narrator comments on how human life can be considered an “appalling enigma,” which implies that he finds life to be ultimately mysterious and filled with suffering. The narrator’s attitude implies that while the deaths of Nathan and Sophie represent the first time Stingo encountered loss, they will not be the last. This tragedy robs him of his innocence and sets him up to grapple with the painful reality of what the world actually is. While this transition to maturity and greater self-awareness is very painful for Stingo, it also marks the moment when he becomes more capable of articulating himself as a writer. He realizes that his pain was what finally gave him a voice and molded him into the man he wanted to be.