Our Town Theme Essay

In the town of Grover’s Corner Wisconsin, there lies a small farm town with all the small town aspects. The newspaper editor runs the newspaper from his own house as the doctor runs the clinic from his house. The small town being shown through the combination uses of one building, giving off the small town feel, “The town hall and post office combined; jail’s in the basement” (Wilder 4). The younger men have the jobs of delivering the milk and newspapers in the morning. “Joe Juniors getting up so as to deliver the paper” (Wilder 6). In Our Town there is Irony among the fact that the Joe Crowell graduated from the head of his high school class and his college class, then went and died in the war. Throughout the story, the author Thornton Wilder uses mood and tone to really help describe and explain what the play is telling us.

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.

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

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.

Our Town presents life as it truly is; as humans, we tend to only remember the big events in our life, and neglect the minute details. Throughout the book, Wilder entertains the notion that humans have learned to seemingly distance themselves from anything that doesn’t have immediate value to their memories. Our Town proves this notion by examining key aspects of the average person’s life in Grover’s Corners- childhood and marriage. To quote the Stage Manager as they exclaim in Act I, “This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying”.

Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town" provides audiences with a glimpse into the lives of people inhabiting the small town of Grover's Corners. People in this town are relatively simple individuals and the first two acts actually emphasize the stability there by showing how individuals are inclined to connect to each-other as if they were part of a larger family. Wilder makes it possible for audiences to gain a more complex understanding concerning how people in a small town feel with regard to each-other. These individuals consider that it would be perfectly normal for them to accept their neighbors and prefer to keep matters as they are, taking into account that they generally seem reluctant to support the idea of change.

Eliezer Yudkowsky once said, “You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in.” I deem this quote to be very applicable to my life. I grew up in Atlanta, GA, and I currently attend Tri-Cities High School. Growing up in my community, the youth are often labeled as “at-risk” or “troubled teens”. However, to stay away from this negative stigma, I joined a plethora of clubs and organizations within my school. Freshman year, I participated in FBLA and the Debate Club. Sophomore year, I was SGA Treasurer and co-captain of the cheerleading team. Junior year, I was involved in the Technical Theater magnet department in which I helped managed plays/productions held at our school. Currently, during my senior year, I'm still involved with the Technical Theater department and have also joined an organization called “Freshman Buddies” — a group of seniors who assist freshmen with their transition into high school.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder is a play that a first glance appears to be dull and quite ordinary play but if analyzed is a complex tragedy with a deep meaning. It is set in a small town in New Hampshire called Grover’s Corners, in the early 1900s, with a population of about 2,000 people. It is enforced throughout the play that the town is not extraordinary and very routine. This foundation is what highlights the overall message that the play conveys; death is inevitable, life is short and always taken for granted. The play also includes many plain characters, one of which is a woman named Emily Webb. She is not a extravagant character, rather undeveloped, but has a significant role in being the tragic hero.

Baltimore city, home to a wealth of people from all walks of life and how it became the city we know today. Founded by the British during the 1700’s as a port city, Baltimore has a significant historically impact from the American Revolution to the civil war. Originally named for Lord Baltimore of England. The city began its roots on Native American land, which unfortunately pushed the native Americans westward as the city began to grow. Baltimore was chosen as a city settlement as is has one of the most naturally protected harbors in the Americas. The Appalachian mountain range to the west protects the city from eastern moving storm fronts, and the Delmarva peninsula serves to prevent tropical storms or hurricanes

Love and change are all part of life. But sometimes we humans take life for granted. We don't appreciate everything we have until it is gone. In “Our town” Thornton wilder used the theme to spread his message of how we should cherish every moment of life. Thornton wilder wanted his audience to live life to the fullest while is using characterization at the same time to help develop his theme and show how as time goes by we change in some way.

Thornton Wilder demonstrates an abundant amount of humanism in the play Our Town. Humanism has many definitions and can entail many theories. “The First Act was called the Daily Life” (Wilder 288). Through the first act alone, viewers are able to connect and relate with characters such as Mr. and Mrs. Webb, Emily, George, and Rebecca about what goes on in their daily lives. Through the connections made with these characters, we see what it is like to live in a small town and “go through the motions.” While these characters and some real-life individuals to dwell in similar areas in comparison to Grover’s Corners, small town life is not necessarily for everyone. Like all things life, moving to a small town and getting acquainted with the

Our Town...no not Colby, the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder reveals a certain simplicity to everyday life. The three Acts allow for a representation of three different stages of life in a small town in New Hampshire. Act I: Daily Life construes an image of mundane activities that occur in day-to-day life. It follows the lives of the Gibb’s family, Webb’s family and Simon Stimson. A potential love story begins to bloom in the first Act between the Gibb’s son, George, and the Webb’s daughter, Emily. Act II: Love & Marriage deals with the marriage of the potential love story of George and Emily from the first Act. The events leading up to the actual marriage accentuate the struggles of young adults leaving behind their childhood for both their

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.