Paradox In Our Town

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.

Robert Frost and William Shakespeare have been celebrated by many people because of their ability to express themselves through the written word. Here we are years after their deaths analyzing these fascinating poems about life and death. It’s clear they had similar thoughts about this subject at the time of these writings, even though their characters could not have been more opposite. For both poets, life is too

Through the use of irony in the HappyLife home, Bradbury demonstrates the notion that although the home included “everything” the Hadley family “could ever need,” the home could not imitate the human emotion and nurturing that is needed for a truly meaningful life (Bradbury 1). The Hadley parents, George and Lydia, did not feel that human interaction was necessary, but rather that an expensive, state-of-the-art home could provide anything they could ever want. Bradbury emphasizes the idea that the Hadley family was provided for when he states that “They walked down the hall of their HappyLife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars

Life, the existence of an individual human being. All humans have the desire to “exist” as one would say, to become influential in this world. But is it not possible to exist once one is gone? Famous film director Alfred Hitchcock argues that characters are more important dead than alive. In this life, in order to become important or even cared about, one must die. Death has become the key to success because everyone misses those who are gone. Literary work such as Macbeth, A Lesson Before Dying, Are You Worth More Dead Than Alive? and, How the King of Pop Made 1.5 Million, have proven that not only characters but humans hold more value once they are dead.

Each individual has a unique way of coping with death, and this is evident throughout Christina Rossetti’s, “Remember” and W. H. Auden’s “Stop all of the Clocks”.

Chuck Palahniuk once said, “The first step to eternal life, is you have to die.” In William Cullen Bryant’s poem “Thanatopsis”, he does not mention eternal life or anything religious, but speaks about death. He tells his readers that death is a natural thing and they should not worry about it. William Cullen Bryant, in his poem “Thanatopsis”, portrays a comforting view of death. Throughout the poem, Bryant encourages his readers by explaining that in death they are not alone, that death, like life, is a natural process, and that they will be among some of the finest people who walked the earth.

The play, Romeo and Juliet has many deaths, which are usually suicides because they have lost someone they love. The novel, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham also has people risking their lives or even suicide because they will or are not able to live without the person they love. However, the short story, “No Renewal” shows that Douglas doesn’t appreciate his new lifestyle because he already made his old lifestyle part of his identity. All these texts suggest that when one loses someone or something that is part of one’s identity, one may willingly welcome death.

The author asks question in the play, what happens when you die? Everyman looks back into his life and tries to find a time that he can give up but he is not ready to do so. Throughout the play, Everyman begins to realize the things he thought were important

By creating a background for the town, Capote captivates the readers- with careful examination a parallel can be drawn between the physical deterioration of the town and the moral deterioration of murders Dick and Perry.The rarity of such descript imagery in nonfiction begs the question of author purpose: Capote could have merely adorned his descriptions for the creation of the metaphor, a distinct attribute of a fiction novelist. Moreover, Capote intensifies and dramatizes the setting by “[a]ltering numerical counts, for example, changing the number of churches in Garden City from twenty-two to twenty-eight”, thus further cultivating the religious atmosphere of Holcomb, connecting the readers to the text and attesting to the Christian zeal of the townspeople (De Bellis 522). Capote’s descriptive elaboration appears copiously throughout the entire novel; in the final line, Capote chillingly describes Dewey’s departure from Nancy’s grave, “he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat”, creating a lasting memory with his use of melodramatic alliteration: a successful accomplishment for any piece of fiction literature (Capote 343).

In the play “everyman” death is depicted as something that is terribly feared as no one seemed ready for it, death is perceived as something that takes one away from the pleasures of this world.

Many people meet the end of their life and wonder if they have truly left a lasting impact on their society, friends, and family. Many people will probably ask themselves this question at some point during their lives. Most people want to leave a lasting impact on the world, like George Washington, M.L.K., and Albert Einstein. If someone is not living true to himself or herself, then they are incapable of leaving a positive impact on society. An unlived life is characterized as a life that is not true to one’s inner self, and this is seen through the following texts, “The Beast in the Jungle” by Henry James, “Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes, and “The Revolt of Mother” by Mary Wilkins Freeman.

The stage manager serves as a narrator and gives the reader (or the audience) critical information throughout the play. Wilder’s purpose for writing the story in third person is so that the story can be whole and effective, as opposed to if it were written in first person, where only parts of the story could be told. Through the third person point of view, Wilder achieves his purpose, and is able to tell the story completely and objectively.

Life is fragile, everything that knows life will eventually meet death; it is impossible to mention one without the other. Humans have grasped the concept of life and death more so than any other species, yet we still consider it one of the great unknowns. All man knows in regards to life, he learns from his experiences with death. Man can look to many classic and religious texts searching for the meaning of life, but the only way one can truly learn it is through experience. To many, finding happiness means first coming to terms with the finite stretch of life one has and then making the most of it. Many films try to breach the subject of the preciousness of life, but only a few seem to hit as deeply as ones told through the eyes of a

Time is long, but life is short. Both Affirmation by Donald hall and the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Millar discuss the theme of death. Both works are successful in showing that the course one takes in life is of little importance, as death is inevitable. This is shown through old age, ignorance and how people come and go in one’s life.

Within this novel, Morrie embraced his mortality with “love, acceptance and open communication” as he gave the reader a glimpse into what he considered to be “The Meaning of Life.” Using Mitch Albom as a vessel to pen his “own culture values,” Morrie was able to define the contradictions between others vision of “popular culture values” and his style of truly living through “life, death and reincarnation.” With the use of materials obtained from the course, this writer was able to summarize various observations about Morrie’s “final lecture” on life, death and family amidst his perceptual understanding that reorganized “aging as growth and not