Our Town Essay, Research Paper

In a New York Times reappraisal of Thorton Wilder s drama, Our Town, reviewer Brooks Atkinson proclaimed that Mr. Wilder has transmuted the simple events of human life into cosmopolitan reveries ( Atkinson 119 ) . Our Town can surely be considered an illustration of the catholicity of clip, societal history, and spiritual ideals.

Thorton Wilder was born in 1897. He was interested in the theatre since his childhood. By the clip he entered Oberlin College in 1915 he had already written three short dramas, or three minute dramas. He completed his undergraduate surveies at Yale and began a teaching occupation at the Lawrenceville School, near Princeton, New Jersey, in 1921. He earned his grade from Princeton University in 1926. Wilder foremost gained acknowledgment as a novelist. He won his first Pulitzer Prize for The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which he wrote in 1927. In 1938 his celebrated drama, Our Town, was performed. It was a immense success and earned Wilder a 2nd Pulitzer Prize. In 1941 World War II began, and in 1942 Wilder enlisted in the Air Force. Later that twelvemonth another of his dramas, The Skin of Our Teeth was performed, and earned him his 3rd Pulitzer Prize. In 1954 his revised version of Merchant of Yonkers, now called The Matchmaker, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival, and was a immense success. The undermentioned twelvemonth it was a hit in London and New York, and ten old ages subsequently it became a successful musical, Hello Dolly ( Cohn 276 ) . After carry throughing farther acknowledgment and celebrity for legion more dramas, Thorton Wilder died on December 7, 1975, in Hamden Connecticut.

The really first public presentation of the drama, Our Town, took topographic point at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 22, 1938. It experienced a brief and black tally in Boston, but after its first public presentation in New York, at the Henry Miller Theater on February 4th of the same twelvemonth, it received overpoweringly positive reappraisals. The New York Times called it one of the finest accomplishments of the current phase Although Thorton Wilder is celebrated chiefly for his fiction, it will be necessary now to think with him as a playwright He has given familiar facts a profoundly traveling, philosophical position ( Atkinson 119 ) . The referee further praised the drama s usage of a bare phase, the all-knowing Stage Manager, and the many unconventional elements, stating, The whole consequence gives ten times every bit much theatre as conventional scenery would give ( Atkinson 120 ) . Our Town was adapted for a movie version in 1940 and was besides made into a musical called Grover s Corners in 1987. To this twenty-four hours it continues to be one of the most often performed dramas of the century.

The events throughout the drama are simple and mean in themselves, but when combined into a greater narrative, typify the greater significance of human life in general. After the Stage Manager s debut, we see a usual twenty-four hours unfold in the first act. In Act I we see how the Gibbs and Webb households, who are neighbours, operate on a daily footing. The female parents send the kids off to school and travel about their work around the house, and the male parents discuss their Fieldss of work. Dr. Gibbs is the town doctor and Mr. Webb is the publishing house and editor of the Grover s Corners local paper, the Sentinel. We besides see assorted other town members, such as the milkman, the constabulary officer, and the paperboy, travel about their day-to-day responsibilities. During the twenty-four hours, Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibbs chitchat in their gardens, Mr. Webb and Professor Willard discuss some background information about the town, and George Gibbs walks Emily Webb place from school. The act ends with George and Emily s conversation through their Windowss, by moonshine. Act II depicts love and matrimony in the lives of the characters. It takes topographic point three old ages subsequently, on George and Emily s marrying twenty-four hours. The Phase Manager provides a flashback to the twenty-four hours the two characters realized that they were in love with each other. Both the bride and the groom experience the normal nuptials twenty-four hours heebie-jeebiess. They are fearful of turning old excessively rapidly, and of the opportunity that they may non be wholly happy for the remainder of their lives. Their parents have to cover with giving up their boy and girl ; they are allowing them go. However, the parents calm George and Emily and they go through with the ceremonial. The Phase Manager plays the portion of the curate. Act III takes topographic point nine old ages subsequently, and the scene takes topographic point in a ceremonial on a hill, where Emily is about to be buried. We see conversation between characters that have already died, sitting on chairs that are meant to be their headstones. Emily enters and takes her topographic point among them. When the townsfolk ascent the hill for the ceremonial, they do non see the asleep, but the asleep see them, and remark on their deficiency of understanding. Emily is at first discerning about stoping her life on Earth, so she chooses to live over one twenty-four hours of her life, her 12th birthday. However, she is glad to return to the graveyard because she realizes how much the dead understand that the life do non. As George weeps by Emily s grave, she remarks, They don t understand, do they? and the drama ends ( Wilder 111 ) .

The Stage Manager serves the same function as the Chorus would in a Grecian drama. He tells things as a storyteller would throughout the drama, and is existing in the yesteryear and the present at the same clip. He speaks straight to the audience and besides straight interacts with the characters of T

he play. He has a treatment with Mr. Webb and Professor Willard in the first act, and serves as the curate at the nuptials in Act II. In the 3rd act he speaks straight with Emily about the difference between the life and the dead. The Phase Manager does non stand for the writer of the drama, but through his remarks and mentions, Wilder emphasizes the continuity of human life. The Phase Manager appears in each scene and remains all-knowing throughout the drama. Through his commentary, it becomes even more obvious that, although the characters age and their personal lives are altered, human life in general remains unchanged ; much of the same things happen every twenty-four hours, every twelvemonth.

The major subject of Our Town is catholicity, which is emphasized by a great trade of pragmatism. The drama is called Our Town, non A Town, because it is meant to typify everyone s town and the catholicity of human life, feelings, and emotions. This symbolic significance of the scene is emphasized by the denudation of the phase of legion props and set stuffs, leting the drama to be representative of all times ; it is non tagged as a specific epoch. The town of the drama, Grover s Corners, is a sleepy, simple small town in New Hampshire, but is symbolic of the full human universe in the drama. The characters are non in the province of head that they exist in their ain small protective universe ; there is grounds within their duologue that they are cognizant of the larger universe, as a whole, outside of Grover s Corners. For illustration, in Act I Rebecca Gibbs, in a treatment with her brother George, asks, George, is the Moon reflecting on South America, Canada, and half the whole universe? George replies that it prob ly is ( Wilder 43 ) . Further into their treatment, Rebecca refers to a missive that was addressed to Jane Crofut ; the Crofut Farm ; Grover s Corners ; Sutton County ; New Hampshire ; United States of America ; Continent of North America ; Western Hemisphere ; the Earth ; the Solar System ; the Universe ; the Mind of God ( Wilder 46 ) . The characters usage of the words 100s, 1000s, and 1000000s besides prove that they realize that they are a portion of a greater world ; of human being in general. They besides refer to topographic points beyond their town s boundaries, such as universities that were attended by town members.

The drama, although meant to stand for all clip epochs, Begins on May 7, 1901, a clip considered as the good old yearss, before the national economic system dominated all parts of the state ; before World War I changed the universe and the lives of so many people. This merely makes it possible for the events throughout the drama to stay undisturbed by timely historical events that may hold the ability to hold an consequence on the lives of human existences. The characters are besides symbolic of human existences in general. Just about any human being can associate to the mundane happenings and emotions that they experience. Wilder takes apparently fiddling elements of life and celebrates them ; he takes clich state of affairss and develops them into distinctive, lively experiences of human life. His drama emphasizes the admiration and beauty of ordinary elements day-to-day life ( Cohn 276-277 ) .

Grover s Corners, nevertheless, is non an unrealistically perfect town ; Wilder did non mean to show that rural life is quaint and wholly happy ( Cohn 277 ) . The town does hold a gaol and a local rummy who really contemplates suicide. Death is besides a subject in the work, and the characters are forced to cover with the trouble of the loss of loved 1s, as is exhibited in Act III.

Three sub-themes, all centered on a more general and changeless subject of cosmopolitan love, prevail throughout the drama: in Act I, love refering friendly relationship and familial relationships ; in Act II, romantic love, displayed by the compact of matrimony ; and in Act III, religious love, the type experienced when covering with decease, a love that is altruistic and expects no return. Act I is a word picture of day-to-day life. We see the workings of relationships between hubbies and married womans, brothers and sisters, parents and kids, neighbours, friends, and assorted townsfolk. Act II is centered on the matrimony of George Gibbs and Emily Webb. We see how romantic love develops between them, and the promise they make to each other in their matrimony vows. Act III hits on decease, get bying with the loss of loved 1s, and the dramatic difference between the apprehensions of the life and the dead. We see a funeral emanation take topographic point among the life, and at the same clip we see Emily, deceased, take her topographic point among the dead. Emily has a heightened apprehension of the significance of life, and about commiserations George, as he is left behind to mourn her decease. It is obvious that their bond of love is still integral, and that Emily besides still loves her household, her town, and the life to which she has merely bid farewell. All of the events are instead simple and devoid of any great sum of action or escapade, but Wilder chose them to stress the importance of the small things in life.

In each act, every bit different as these underlying subjects may be, there are mundane happenings that repeat themselves like clockwork. Wilder surely emphasizes the continuity of human life throughout the drama.

Unlike romantic, adventuresome, or other types of inventive literature that may incorporate elements that can non ever be related to average human life, Our Town exhibits a great trade of pragmatism.