Free Essays on Our Town

Wilder's passionate plea in the play is to appreciate every moment of every day, for life is a fleeting thing. With troubles rapidly expanding in Europe and war becoming a looming reality, people were inundated with the negative aspects of life. To see Our Town was to escape from the negative and rejoice in the ordinary; it reaffirmed faith in the unchanging moral values of small town living. It was obviously the balm that audiences needed in the midst of a pessimistic and changing world. Through his play, Wilder tries to teach the audience to seize the moment and enjoy living. There are no guarantees about a certain life span, as evidenced by the premature deaths of Emily Webb and her brother, Wally; tomorrow may be too late. By calling the drama Our Town and portraying ordinary people and events, the people in the audience and the readers of the play can identify with the theme and apply it to their own lives. Our Town is an unusual play in structure. It intentionally conta! ins little action, in order to support the theme; nothing exciting or suspenseful happens in any of the three acts, just as nothing exciting happens in Grover's Corners. The play also ignores most dramatic conventions. In the beginning, the Stage Manager saunters on to an empty stage to talk directly to the audience; he tells them that the play is ready to begin. He then describes the appearance of Grover's Corners and its inhabitants. The play also ignores the unity of time and place. Between the first and second acts, three years pass. Then between the second and third acts, another nine years pass. In addition, the omniscient Stage Manager has repeated flashbacks to the past and flash-forwards to the future, further negating a unity of time. The play also has many locations. Although the entire play takes place in or around Grover's Corners, each act has a different and distinct key setting. In Act I, most of the action takes place in the homes of the Webbï ¿ ½... Free Essays on Our Town Free Essays on Our Town Our Town In the play Our Town, Thornton Wilder uses the commentary about certain social issues to further exemplify the point that the people of Grover’s Corner are really quite conservative and rather passive while they let life pass them by. The commentary of the people on a few issues such as suicide, alcoholism and religious faith show the people’s attitudes. A couple specific situations of a few people symbolize the perspective that the entire town has on the situations. Religious faith is one of the issues used by Wilder. Most everyone in Grover’s Corner is religious, and a member of one of the churches in town, all being Christian in one form or another. They are also very conservative republicans that don’t like change. Mr. Webb, publisher and editor of the local paper informed the audience, â€Å"Politically, we’re eighty-six per cent Republicans ... Religiously, we’re eighty-five per cent Protestants ... Very ordinary town, if you ask me... But our young people seem to like it well enough. Ninety per cent of them graduating from high school settle down right here to live.† The town’s people’s religion sets the standard for their morals and behavior in everyday life. Everyone goes about their daily routine day after day with a kind of faith that it will continue without changing unless they make the change themselves. When Emily is watching her funeral from above after she dies, she wants to go ba ck to how it was and relive just another day of her life. â€Å"But mother Gibbs, one can go back; one can go back there again †¦ into the living. I feel it. I know it.† pleaded Emily. One of the issues used by Wilder is suicide. Since suicide is very rarely seen especially in a small town like Grover’s Corner, one would expect that the town’s people would attempt to keep it a secret. Joe Stoddard, the local gravedigger, was speaking to Sam Craig, a man who grew up in the town, about one of the head stones... Free Essays on Our Town Wilder's passionate plea in the play is to appreciate every moment of every day, for life is a fleeting thing. With troubles rapidly expanding in Europe and war becoming a looming reality, people were inundated with the negative aspects of life. To see Our Town was to escape from the negative and rejoice in the ordinary; it reaffirmed faith in the unchanging moral values of small town living. It was obviously the balm that audiences needed in the midst of a pessimistic and changing world. Through his play, Wilder tries to teach the audience to seize the moment and enjoy living. There are no guarantees about a certain life span, as evidenced by the premature deaths of Emily Webb and her brother, Wally; tomorrow may be too late. By calling the drama Our Town and portraying ordinary people and events, the people in the audience and the readers of the play can identify with the theme and apply it to their own lives. Our Town is an unusual play in structure. It intentionally conta! ins little action, in order to support the theme; nothing exciting or suspenseful happens in any of the three acts, just as nothing exciting happens in Grover's Corners. The play also ignores most dramatic conventions. In the beginning, the Stage Manager saunters on to an empty stage to talk directly to the audience; he tells them that the play is ready to begin. He then describes the appearance of Grover's Corners and its inhabitants. The play also ignores the unity of time and place. Between the first and second acts, three years pass. Then between the second and third acts, another nine years pass. In addition, the omniscient Stage Manager has repeated flashbacks to the past and flash-forwards to the future, further negating a unity of time. The play also has many locations. Although the entire play takes place in or around Grover's Corners, each act has a different and distinct key setting. In Act I, most of the action takes place in the homes of the Webbï ¿ ½... Free Essays on Our Town In the play Our Town, the people of Grover’s Corners mask their worries and apprehensions about death in their quest for happiness. In the first act, a few deaths occur, and the attitude of the people towards these deaths is a negligent one of briefly acknowledging death and moving on. Also, the children in act two who are faced with adulthood are reluctant to accept the burden, through their hesitance to grow up and approach death. In the third act, when we finally get a clear picture of death, the reader sees that the people who are dead are regretful that their mundane lives were incomplete, not realizing the importance of life until they are dead. This method of living proves unfulfilling, as the dead arduously mourn their trivial lives yearning to have made a difference. The stage manager directs the flow of the play throughout, and his transient attitude towards death reflects Grover’s Corners overall outlook on a life that tries to mentally avoid death. This stan ce is established primarily by the stage manager in his first act narrative, which hastily describes the fatalities, masking their importance and reality. â€Å"Want to tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell there. Joe was awful bright – graduated from high school here, head of his class. So he got a scholarship to Massachusetts Tech. Graduated head of his class there, too. It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin’ to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France.† (P.9) This brief account demonstrates the importance placed on a man’s death. The people of Grover’s Corners live in a world where change is frowned upon; consequently, the means of dealing with such a great adjustment as death is to prevent themselves from thinking of it. In the stagnant society of Grover’s corners, death is the ultimate obstacle, and ignorance is the remedy. Another instance where the stage manager subtly demon strates this pract...