Past Memories In The Play Our Town By Thornton Wilder

How often do you think about what the dead sees, the importance of what we do every second of everyday, and others’ view on love? Thornton Wilder puts all three of these ideas into words and wrapped them up in one Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town. He tells his story through his characters’ past memories and their different perspectives. Each instance is a character's memory and most of them passed away before the story is told. With this modernistic approach, Wilder teaches the reader the three most meaningful parts of life: everyday actions, love, and death through reflections on past memories. How someone spends their time each day plays an important part on reflections and regrets. As stated by Wilder’s character, Emily Webb Gibbs, people have to notice others while they are still alive. Everyday, one should spend time with and notice the people they love the most while they still have the chance to. Otherwise they will look back on those moments and regret spending each day the same way. In, Our Town, the characters went through the same routines. Some wanted to see the world, others were perfectly content in their little town, Grover's Corner. Either way, those characters focused on what they wanted at that time, rather than
In the second act of the play, George Gibbs and Emily Webb get married. Before the ceremony took place, Wilder reflected on the story of how they first discovered they were fond of each other. Both Mr. and Mrs. Webb and Gibbs also look back on how they felt before their weddings. At the ceremony, both the bride and groom had last minutes thoughts, caused by nerves, that almost prevented the ceremony from taking place. The purpose of these stories was to show the cycle of and strange thoughts toward