Our Town :: essays research papers

Our townsfolkship, by Thornton Wilder, is an Ameri do-nothing classic, expressing with heating system and humor the eternal truths of human existence. It is a heartening, compassionate glimpse of that clock before the Great Wars before our innocence was lost forever. From the time of its counterbalance performances in 1938, it has continued to be regarded as nonp aril of the best representations of life-time in America and of the richness of our theatre world. For decades it has remained a landmark of representation craftsmanship and a loving picture of American life. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Our townspeople depicts pathos set against a background of centuries of time, social history, and religious ideas. As the Stage Manager (who functions as a Greek chorus in the drama) says "This is the way we were in our growing-up and in our marrying and in our doctoring and in our living and in our dying." Our Town is set in 1901 in Grovers Corners, New Hampshire, where th e Gibbses and the Webbs be neighbors. During their childishness George Gibbs and Emily Webb atomic number 18 playmates and their lives are inextricably woven together as neighbors lives are likely to be. But as they grow older they pass into a state of romantic (and embarrassing) interest in one another. George proposes to Emily in the medicine store over an ice cream soda, and they are married with all(prenominal) the good folks of Grovers Corners in attendance. But George and Emilys happiness is short-lived. Emily dies in vaginal birth and is buried in the towns cemetery on a rainy, dreary day. at that place she is reunited with those friends and neighbors who have died before her, and who help her acclimate herself to her new existence. In one of the most vital scenes in modern theatre, the peace and quiet of death, which can never be understood by the living, is portrayed. Our Town is not honest about Emily and George and, indeed, is not just about a small town in norther n New England a hundred years ago. Our Town is a play about what we (and Thornton Wilder) thought America and Americans were. As we are about to take a head-long leap into the next century we are forced, not only to look ahead to what we might become, but to crop and look back at what allowed us to arrive at this room access of the new millennium.