Most Independence Days I think about hot dogs, potato salad, Souza, and fireworks. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it-every,every minute?”To answer poor dead Emily's question: I know I don't. 'So all that was going on and we never noticed.Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Wilder’s soul-stirring play is one that illuminates both the nobility and the pain in the fleetingness of human life. It is here we witness the most tragic event in Our Town, George's collapsing in front of Emily’s headstone, mourning his loss ~~ their loss.Īnd in the end? OUR TOWN serves up much more than a pleasant, greeting-card picture of old New England. She wonders if humans ever realize the meaning of life while they actually live it. After revisiting her life Emily sadly realizes life goes so quickly, and people don't realize it. Soon we find out that Emily is about to join the dead. They become weaned away from life on earth. The Stage Manager explains how the dead don't stay interested in the living for very long. He walks into the cemetery and points out the gravestone of Mrs. The Stage Manager explains how things have slowly changed in that time, such as fewer horses on Main Street and people locking their doors at night. The third act takes place nine years later in the summer of 1913. We hear various characters’ opinions about marriage, which compels them to make their own judgment and promotes the idea that while marriage may be another part of daily life, “ each marriage is different from all the others, and no definition could satisfy everybody.' In Act II, Wilder explores “Love and Marriage.” Once more, the audience is transported back to events in George and Emily’s life this time their wedding day. Wilder expertly blends comic vignettes that artfully show us the love, compassion and understanding that these characters are built upon. The first act unfolds, depicting 24 hours in the life of this average American town as we slowly see the characters reveal their souls to us.

Wilder blends meditations on the ever evolving course of human existence with a heartfelt picture of life in small-town America. In OUR TOWN, Wilder expertly explores the beauty and sorrow of human life. 81 years later this powerful piece of theatre has lost none of it's charm. Our Town has been called ' Wilder's hymn to ordinary lives,' and so it is. It is easy to see why this is one of the heavy hitters of the American Theatre.

It's been years perhaps a decade or more since I last read OUR TOWN. “Does anybody realize what life is while they're living it - every, every minute?”

Our town book thornton wilder