Small Town Living In Our Town

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.

Imagine growing up in a small town where everyone knows everyone's business and the nearest Wal-Mart is almost an hour away; then imagine attending a school where the amount of student attending is the same number of people who occupy a small town. The size difference is substantial and plays an important role. When I was younger, I had attended both a small town school and a school in the city. I have had the chance to experience the different lifestyles of these two variations of living. The development of who I am today was because of my surroundings. In the city, I noticed there was different opportunities. The opportunities seemed more readily available depending on funding and sources; which are dependant on the location. Education, development, and opportunities are widely known to be affected by environmental factors; thus, people who live in the city have a different experience than those who reside in small towns.

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.

The social climate in the play is very grim. No matter where you are in the play there are always characters who are suffering. This may be understood as the people in the play are representing the Indian Americans who lived on reservations all over America, and most of them went through suffering. Another social climate is the desire to escape there current situation. Eddie does not want to leave his sister alone, but he is tired of living on the reservation that he would rather be dead. Aunt Thelma tells Eddie how life could have been better if she could have escaped, and had a chance at an education. Mike dreams of leaving and being taken care of by his aunt. Even Katherine dreams of leaving the reservation to find a better place for her kids. There were many other social climates such as pain, depression, destructive habits, and lack of role models. There are no real role models in this play that the kids can look up to. Even Aunt Thelma has lost her child, so it is not the best example to live by.

The everyday life of Grover’s Corners and Colby can be shown to produce a wealth of similarities. A day may not be found when strolling through town, that one may fail to bump into a person him or her recognizes. It seems that everyone knows someone in one way or another. Thus, it provides for the yielding of gossip throughout both Colby and Grover’s Corners. This becomes depicted in the play as the Stage Manager states, “In our town we like to know the facts about everybody”(Wilder 7). The statement definitely portrays the gossip that the communities hanker for. As well as gossip and talk, in both locations one may run across a town drunk. Every now and then, one can see a regular drunk, crawling along to the liquor store. Along with these conditions, the

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.

Our Town, written by Thornton Wilder, is one of the most performed plays in America. In this play, a number of characters with different roles and traits appear, and the roles range from doctor, student, undertaker, and housewife to a newspaper editor. The background of this play is a small one-stop town in New Hampshire, just across the Massachusetts line, and its name is Grover’s Corners. The main character I would like to focus on throughout this writing is Mrs. Gibbs, who is the mother of George Gibbs and Rebbeca Gibbs, and the wife of Dr. Gibbs. Even though she is nothing more than a common housewife, the role Mrs. Gibbs plays seems quite vital in this play. Her role is

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

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.

Living and growing up in a small town is better than doing so in a big city.

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.