Life In The Play Our Town

Do human beings take life for granted? Pondering this question, it is fair to say that as a society, we’ve been steadily moving towards convenience, towards getting through everything as fast as we possibly can. With this desire for speed, we seem to be forgetting the value of life and appreciating it. We live in a world where everything is driven by efficiency, and human interaction is slowly becoming rarer. While this may seem like a very melodramatic description of our world, it’s truly not that far-fetched. The idea of “taking it slow” and the idea of all aspects of life having meaning are explored in the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Our Town is a play which tells the story of a generic American town, Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire,
The first act of the play focuses on business-as-usual 1901 American life, which can be extremely dull, to say the least. A romance sparks between George Gibbs and Emily Webb in this act and is further developed in Act II. This part of the play, “Love and Marriage”, is all about George and Emily’s wedding, arguably a very significant event in their life. Then, the play’s last act deals with the inevitability of the end, death, and how humans really only realize the gift of life once it’s gone, once they’ve rushed through it. This idea is portrayed through Emily, who dies in childbirth and realizes that humans don’t ever realize life while they’re living it. By intentionally offering both the microscopic and macroscopic perspectives, unorthodox theatrical elements, exploration and manipulation of time and space, investigating life after death and challenging our notions about what is meaningful throughout the play, Wilder urges us to appreciate our lives more while acknowledging the seemingly insignificant without losing sight of the the overall, the hopes and
Right off the bat, this play starts off in a puzzlingly unusual way. “No curtains. No scenery. The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light” (3). Much to the audience’s surprise, the stage manager begins speaking directly to them. Wilder is doing this in an effort to make the audience feel like they’re not just spectating, but participating, and this goes a long way to make the play that much more relatable and impactful. This is taken even further when the Stage Manager begins describing their town, or more accurately, Our Town. The description of the town seems so vague but so specific at the same time, with striking similarities to almost every other American town, even today. This powerful technique of pulling the reader or observer into the play makes them much more susceptible to new ways of thinking. In addition to this, Wilder also chooses to forego the use of props almost entirely. While initially this may seem like an unusual decision that would compromise the understandability of the play, it is executed in a manner which leaves just enough to convey meaning. With a majority of the play set being reduced to just actors, tables, and chairs, it rids the scene of distractions and allows the audience to fully take in the deep meaning