14 May 2014 Analysis of “Our Town” Thorton Wilder’s Our Town is a play set in the early 1900’s

Our Town is a play written by Thornton Wilder in 1937. Our Town is a play about the daily life in Act One, love and marriage in Act Two and death and dying in Act Three. The play is about two main characters, Emily Webb and George Gibbs. The play in Act One just goes through the daily life of the characters. Act Two it shows the love and marriage between these two characters and last Act Three shows life after death of the characters. The play has a man called the Stage Manager that is mainly a narrator throughout the play but also takes on the role of people in the town. The Stage Manager knows many thing about the people in the play Our Town.  The Stage Manager steps in, describes scenes, and seems to start and stop the action of the play whenever he wants. The Stage Manager has many similarities to God. The Stage Manager doesn't only know everything about everyone, he can also see into the future. The Stage Manager is also present in every scene watching it all play out. The Stage Manager and God are different because the Stage Manager unlike God makes

Have you ever thought that even the littlest things in life can make the biggest difference? One of the themes of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town is people never fully appreciate the wonders of daily life. People take everything for granted and don’t really realize how the little things in life actually make a huge impact on your life. Wilder shows examples of the little things in life many times in each of the acts throughout the play. Our Town is about a young couple who falls in love and ends up spending their life together. The young couple overlooks the small but important things in life. Throughout Our Town, Wilder informs us about how all people don’t appreciate the little things in life that actually make a huge difference.

Our Town is a story on how humans does not fully appreciate life until they die and realize what they did and want to go back and change it. Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town is about a town life in three acts. The three acts are as followed. Daily Life, Companionship, and Death.It shows how people live and die and how they regret things they did on earth and come to see the big picture of life. Wilder argues, because life is short we must appreciate the joys of living until we die.

Our Town is a play written by Thornton Wilder set in a small town known as Grover’s Corners. Wilder conjured the Stage Manager to be a representation to the theme of the play. The theme of universality placing Grover’s Corners in view with the rest of the world. Wilder makes a point to the audience that people have a big impact and influence over the next person, whether they were important or insignificant to that individual’s life. Therefore, the Stage Manager emphasizes on this very viewpoint that the lives of certain people are overlooked so are their influences. The Stage Manager himself is a physical embodiment of Wilders own views and opinions of humans and life itself. Throughout the play, the Stage Manager plays various of roles in order to force the realization to the audience into understanding the importance human life and the influence of others.

The movie Our Town was a 1938 American three-act play directed by Thornton Wilder. The movie tells the story about a fictional American town known as Grover’s Corners between 1901 and 1913. Throughout the mover, the director uses meta-theatrical tools to set the play in the theatres where such play was being conducted. The main character in this film is the stage manager who addresses the audience directly. The stage manager also brings in guest lecturers into the play by fielding questions from the viewers as well as filling some of the roles (TheConnection np). The major differences between this play and others are that the actors perform without a proper set and the acting is done without props.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder continues to be a timeless theatrical work performed pervasively throughout the world. This play remains a modern classic due to Wilder’s ingenuity in capturing the quintessential expression of the life cycle. Wilder segmented his play into three acts; each act broadly encompassing a different phase in a person’s life. The play presents the audience with situations parallel to the ones almost everyone faces during their lifetime. This, in conjunction with breaking the fourth wall, allows for the audience to feel a part of the performance. The title of the play itself lends to this feeling, for it is not my town or your town, but it’s Our Town. This play emphasizes the idea that in the grand scheme of things, all

Wilder depicts the continuity of human life in his play. Life and death interfere and happen at the same time. Emily tragically dies during childbirth yet her child survives. Thornton emphasizes the fact that “out of life comes death and from death comes life” (Ballet: 242). He also briefly points out the pointlessness of war. ”Over there are some Civil War veterans. Iron flags on their graves […] All they knew was the name, friends – the United States of America […] And they wend and died about it” (Wilder: 87). The transience of life is depicted in the Stage Manager’s statements e.g. about Babylon “Babylon one had two million people in it, and all we know about ´em is the names of the kings and some copies of wheat contracts… […] and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us” (Wilder: 33). He also points out how rapidly a lifetime goes by “You know how it is: you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions: then wisssh! you’re seventy: you’ve been a lawyer for fifty years, and that white-haired lady at your side has eaten over fifty thousand means with you” (Wilder:

Our Town is a play that takes place near the turn of the century in the small rural town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. The playwright, Thornton Wilder is trying to convey the importance of the little, often unnoticed things in life. Throughout the first two acts he builds a scenario, which allows the third act to show that we as humans often run through life oblivious to what is actually happening. Wilder attempts to show life as something that we take for granted. We do not realize the true value of living until we are dead and gone. The through-line of the action seems to be attention to the details of life. Wilder builds up a plot that pays attention to great details of living.

Our Town takes place in Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire around the turn of the century. (1900’s). This play uses a lot of flashbacks. There’s one with George and Emily when they first fall in love at Mr. Morgan’s shop. It also uses foreshadowing. When they told of how everyone died. Another flashback is when Joe comes back after about ten years and they talk about the dead and everyone’s lives.

The play began with the stage manager (Jackson Mendes) welcoming the audience into the theater as he introduces the people and the places of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire in 1901. Grovers corners is pictured as the perfect American town before any urbanization, automobiles are unusual,

Our Town is different from most plays. It starts with barely any scenery, forcing the viewer to use their imagination. In the beginning the set manager comes on stage and describes the scene while also making sure that everything is under control; he plays an oversoul or God-like figure. Act I describes birth. The play commences before dawn and the first call Dr. Gibbs receives that morning is for the

To begin, the stage manager is important because of the way he/she portrays their function through manipulation of time. The Stage Manager is more than just a narrator in the play Our Town, because he/she is there to help remind the audience to focus on the important things of the play, to help you figure out the main message. Towards the end of act I, we finish that scene with the people of Grover’s Corner finishing their normal day life. The stage manager then begins act II with, “Three years have gone by. Some babies that weren’t even born before have begun talking regular sentences already; and a number of people who thought they were right and young and spry have noticed that they can’t bound up a flight of stairs like they used to, without their heart fluttering a little” (Wilder 47).

Not being the most popular play in modern society, “Our Town” along with many more of Wilder’s plays won the Pulitzer Prize. “Our Town” shows you many traditional American values, such as religion, community, family, and the pleasures of life. “Our Town” uses the role of Stage Manager as a character throughout the play. “Our Town” makes it possible for Emily to speak from the grave. Although, the events, characters, and settings of “Our Town” are unexceptional, “Our Town” addresses such a universal theme such as human condition and mortality.

The play "Our Town" starts out with a family that has children getting ready for school. The play then jumps six years ahead where two of the children are now getting married. The small town all attends the wedding and the Stage Manager goes through discussing what the people say about their wedding. After this the play jumps forward another nine years where the bride is now having her second child and dies during child birth. After this happens it tells about people attending her funeral as she watches in the afterlife along with other people form the town in their afterlife. The Stage Manager goes through explaining how all the people died and then the bride, Emily, decides she wants to go back for just one day. She wasn't allowed to pick a normal day so she just picked her 12th birthday. During her birthday, she had a normal morning with her parents and brother, but as the day goes on she realizes that the time is going by too fast. She decides to go back to the afterlife because it was too hard to sit there and know it was her last day with them. She began to realize that even the boring, daily life is important and should be

Our Town (1938) by Thornton Wilder is a play centered around the American lifestyle in 1901 that follows two people as they grow up together, get married and eventually pass away. Each of the three acts showcase a different period in Emily’s and George’s life until Emily dies during childbirth at the beginning of the third act. Then the play shifts to Emily’s life as a ghost as she reflects back on life and learns that you cannot repeat the past. This play, like The Others, features invisible people but they do not appear to be a threat as they were in