Criticism Of Life In Our Town By Thornton Wilder

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.

Moving on, social occurrences like rumors, excessive town gossip, to casual acquaintances display themselves throughout Wilder’s play, just as in Colby. All in all, differences show in basic numbers of population and statistical comparison, but, otherwise, remain similar in the interrelationships of town-life.

In a time and place where people had no worry of locking their doors, or leaving their possessions unattended, the citizens of Grover’s Corners always possessed a sense of safety and protection. This small town life is set in the play Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. The modest New Hampshire town rarely procured any disturbances or quarrels, resulting in a quiet and tidy place to live. In many ways, the town of Grover’s Corner may be comparable to the petite city of Colby, Kansas. However, the twin towns contain only a few contrasting traits. Considering daily living, love and marriage, and the fragility of life itself, these communities share an abundance of similar characteristics, while only containing a few differences.

Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth” and Samuel Gompers’ letter to Judge Peter Grosscup offer different opinions concerning the course that people of different economic standings should take in regards to power and social stature. However, both works mean to steer society in what seems to be opposite directions. Carnegie focuses more on how the wealthy in the society should take the seemingly philanthropic approach whereas Gompers’ offers a more organizational and structured point of view.

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 is play written a while ago, but it relates to any time. Showing that routine is a part of everybody’s life. No matter what day and age you live in your going to have a routine. This play shows an example of two families and their daily routines. The whole play relates to routine even the different acts.

The Stage Manager maintains a somber tone throughout the play that deeply contrasts with the joy perpetually exuded by the other characters. Wilder emphasizes this contrast particularly during the wedding, in which the Stage Manager offsets the “radiant” atmosphere and digresses: “The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, The first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the deathbed, the reading of the will.” In this passage the Stage Manager describes life as a list of events, thereby expressing his apathy for it. Wilder, therefore, conveys the consequences of recognizing life’s finality. The finality of existence consumes the Stage Manager and causes him to disengage from his surroundings which prevents him from seeing the meaning and importance in a particular moment. His aversion to life is evident when he states, “Once in a thousand times it's interesting.” The Stage Manager merely views life as transient, and despite having the capacity to appreciate it, he is unable to because he only sees value in things that have longevity. Hence, why he is so adamant about putting a copy of the play in the time capsule he mentions because it will be preserved and “the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about

Today donating to charitable causes is a widespread among the world’s wealthy people. Some are contributing the majority of their vast fortunes, “Warren Buffett, who has committed 99 percent of his fortune to charity upon his death, along with Bill and Melinda Gates, who have given more than $28 billion to their foundation and say they plan to give a significant portion of their remaining wealth to good causes.” (Yen). In The Great Gatsby a large amount of Gatsby’s wealth is wasted on lavish parties for people who are indifferent about him. The Buchanan’s are even more selfish. Tom frequently sees the poor when he visits his mistress Myrtle, yet he never feels an obligation to help them. It appears as though the affluent people of today feel that helping the less fortunate is more of their responsibility than the rich of the Roaring 20s did. While the wealthy still don’t support the destitute to their full abilities, noblesse oblige is much more present today in America than it ever has been.

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn all explore the effects of wealth and class on society. On closer inspection, a common strand seems to form between these three classic novels. The idea that wealth (and the social class that comes with it) determines a person is refuted via the use of deep characterization. In the end, it seems, wealth and class don’t determine a person’s moral integrity and value, but rather how they interact those two things. Ultimately, Twain makes a case for the lower-classes, that even the poor (and enslaved) can be truly good, setting a better example than the wealthy. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, shows that rich aren’t entirely superficial, rather, that they can be great men. Bronte’s Jane Eyre is a bit more of an oddball than the other two novels, focusing instead on a protagonist that leaps from riches (under the supervision of a cruel aunt), to rags, then back to riches once again. Still, this common strand holds true between the three books: no class, poor or rich, is entirely exempt from moral bankruptcy. A poor person like Pap Finn can be morally corrupt, while a rich man like Jay Gatsby can be good. All character-based judgments in these books lay solely on the person they are judging, blind of the class and wealth that surrounds them.

One of the major topics explored in The Great Gatsby is the sociology of wealth, specifically, how the newly minted millionaires of the 1920s differ from and relate to the old aristocracy of the country’s richest families. In the novel, West Egg and its denizens represent the newly rich, while East Egg and its denizens, especially Daisy and Tom, represent the old aristocracy. Fitzgerald portrays the newly rich as being vulgar, gaudy, ostentatious, and lacking in social graces and taste. Gatsby, for example, lives in a monstrously ornate mansion, wears a pink suit, drives a Rolls-Royce,

Our Town is a rather unorthodox production. Most playwrights want to go for realism and detail, with huge scene sets or intricate scene changes. Not this one. In Our Town the author (Thornton Wilder) strives to create a play which does not need to rely on scenery and detail, but visualization and the investment of the audience. In this way there is nothing to distract from the core message or plot of the play. What this play does take to it’s advantage are sound effect; with the lack of props or scenery the sound effects give us the perfect amount of imagery to go on. Now within this script there are several directors in which have taken the play and made it their own. Out of three of the plays being: NBC's 1977 representation, PBS’s 1989 representation, and PBS’s 2003 representation. From these three representations one of theme most suitably gets a grasp of what Wilder was going for; simplicity, relatability, and imagery. PBS’s 2003 representation best defines what wilder's vision of his great play was.

In Our Town, there are many themes that are present in the play. There are many instances where the reader or audience can say that while writing the play that Thornton Wilder had in mind that the play was going to support the feminist movement, or the how the play can be used to show how ridiculous the marxist theory is, or it can also say that Wilder intended Our Town to be used to support the mythological theory, both the archetypal characters, in the town drunk, Simon Stimson, and George and Emily, and archetypal images, such as his references Mrs. Webb’s and Mrs. Gibbs’ gardens, and how he continued to reference how the moon looks and its position throughout the play. Thornton Wilder can be said to support the feminist movement because