1. Wilder's biography and his works.

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) - American writer whose innovative novels and

plays reflect his views of the universal truths in human nature. He won three
Pulitzer Prizes—for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and for the plays Our
Town and The Skin of Our Teeth — and a U.S. National Book Award for the
novel The Eighth Day.

After graduating from Yale University in 1920, Wilder studied archaeology in

Rome. From 1930 to 1937 he taught dramatic literature and the classics at the
University of Chicago.

His first novel, The Cabala (1926), set in 20th-century Rome, is essentially a
fantasy about the death of the pagan gods. His most popular novel, The Bridge of
San Luis Rey (1927) examines the lives of 5 people who died in the collapse of a
bridge in 18th-century Peru. The Woman of Andros (1930) is an interpretation of
Terence’s Andria. His later novels are The Ides of March (1948), The Eighth Day
(1967), and Theophilus North (1973).

Wilder’s plays engage the audience in make-believe by having the actors address
the spectators directly and by discarding props and scenery. The Stage Manager in
Our Town (1938) talks to the audience, as do the characters in The Matchmaker
(1954). Wilder won a Pulitzer Prize for Our Town, becoming the only person to
receive the award in both the fiction and drama categories.

Wilder’s other plays include The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), which employs
deliberate anachronisms and the use of the same characters in various geological
and historical periods.

2. What is the genre and artistic system of the work?

«Our Town» is a metatheatrical three-act play. Wilder uses metatheatrical devices,

setting the play in the actual theatre where it is being performed.

Thornton Wilder's «Our Town» is not only a masterpiece of American drama but
one of the earliest and finest works of modernism in theatrical plays. The play,
which is set entirely in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, focuses heavily on the
passage of time and the infinite transience of life.

«Our Town» finds its roots in modernism through many characteristics of the play
itself, most predominately its minimalist stage settings and theatrical style, its
focus on the universality of ordinary American life, and the narrator's frequent
engagement with the audience.
3. Is it an American play? Can we fully appreciate it?

In his play Our Town, Thornton Wilder reveals the traditional American life in the
early 1900s and the appreciation of life and ordinary objects by depicting the life
of people living in a small town in Massachusetts called Grover’s Corners.
Obviously, the play offers a heteronormative, monoracial look at America.

As «Our Town» takes place in small-town, turn-of-the-century America, it offers

us a very particular vision of American life: you take your date to a soda shop,
milk is delivered fresh every morning, fathers dispense allowances, and mothers
take care of the household. Drinking is limited to town drunks, and sex before
marriage is a huge no-no.

4. What are the main themes and motives of the play. Comment on the mood.

This work has one main theme and several minor ones. The primary theme of Our
Town is humanity's failure to appreciate every precious moment of life.

A constant theme in the play is the human tendency to miss the simple joys of their
lives. Throughout the play, characters learn of opportunities and experiences
missed while paying attention to other, less important things. We should
appreciate every moment because we never get a second chance. The play jumps
from Emily’s wedding day to her funeral in the blink of an eye, emphasizing the
idea that our lives are fleeting.

Minor themes of the play:

1.Mortality

From the very beginning of the play, death is present in the Stage Manager’s
narration. He makes it clear that the events we’re about to witness are told in
retrospect, and this understanding casts a pall over the everyday occurrences we
witness. The characters onstage (with the exception of the deceased Emily) do not
recognize the brevity of their lives.

2. Marriage

Marriage in Our Town is shown as a big step, the penultimate moment of a young
person’s life. Love and companionship are prized as giving meaning to life. Yet
marriage in Our Town is not entered into lightly, as we see when Mr. and Mrs.
Webb reminisce over the early days of their marriage, and when George and Emily
have their moments of hesitation.

3. Choices
Our Town contains two pivotal choices. The first is when George forgoes
vocational school in favor of marriage to Emily. This decision can be viewed in
various ways: the triumph of love over career, the sacrifice love requires, etc.
Regardless, it is an important choice in the play. The second pivotal choice is
Emily’s decision to relive her past despite the warnings of other dead people. Her
decision calls attention to the play’s biggest theme: that of life’s transience.

4. Drugs and Alcohol

The abuse of alcohol is used to illuminate the dark side of small town life. Other
than a brief attempt by Mr. Webb, no one reaches out to Simon Stimson ( town
drunk). Instead, Simon’s antics are a source of gossip for the town. His presence in
the play serves to show that not everything is great in Grover’s Corners.

5. The Ties that Bind

Throughout the play, Wilder uses the hymn, "Blessed be the tie that binds," to
underscore the necessity of interpersonal relationships. The hymn recurs during
George and Emily's first nighttime conversation, their wedding, and their funeral,
signifying their evolving bond in three stages of their life together. As Mrs. Gibbs
says, "'Tain't natural to be lonesome," and the play consistently argues that human
meaning can only be expressed through human connections.

The mood of the play is very calm and ordinary, to the point of seeming almost
boring. As a result, Wilder uses the mood to emphasize the theme of his play, that
people are not excited about living. Most people, just like the Gibbs and Webbs, go
through life experiencing the day to day with little joy or sorrow. They simply let
life pass them by smoothly and predictably.

As in all literature and drama, mood in created in Our Town by a combination of

setting,characterization, and description. Examples of how setting contribute to
mood are as follows. Setting has a lot to do with mood in that the stage is starkly
dressed, in fact, almost empty. Another element contributing to mood is that the
scenes jump and time jumps with little feeling of a flow of continuity.

5. Is everyday life poeticized or criticized?

It’s rather criticized and even pessimistic. The author epitomizes even pessimism
in “Our Town” through the everyday actions of the characters, the trivialness of
life, and the attitudes of the dead toward their once loved world. People are spent
through their meaningless everyday tasks, characters are shown to be worthless in
comparison to the universe, and the attitudes of the dead about life are dull. One
can always predict what is going to happen to the characters because they do the
same thing everyday.

Everyday the children eat breakfast and go to school. They simply let life pass
them by smoothly and predictably. The dreary ideas are furthered by other
characters. Everyday, Howie Newsome deliveries milk to the town residents on a
horse named Bessie. Everyday, one of the Crowell brothers delivers the
newspaper. These effects add up to illustrate Wilder’s idea of pessimism.

6. Speak on the symbols and allusions, define their stylistic value.

The Milkman and Paper Boy

These characters symbolize both life's permanence and its transience. Act 1 opens
with milkman Howie Newsome and newspaper boy Joe Crowell making their
morning rounds. In Act 2 Joe has been replaced by his younger brother, Si. In Act
3 both characters have vanished entirely, replaced by undertaker Joe Stoddard and
Emily's cousin Sam Craig. Note the repetition of the name Joe and even the
duplication of Si Crowell's initials in Sam Craig's name.

Heliotrope

A heliotrope is a climbing flower renowned for its wonderful scent. Its name refers
to the way it follows the sun. In Act 1 the heliotrope brings together two sets of
people who take in the flower's fragrance: Emily and her father and Dr. and Mrs.
Gibb. It's just beginning to dawn on Emily that she cares for George Gibbs, so the
flower is associated with romance. At the Gibbs house, Mrs. Gibbs persuades her
cranky husband to "Come out and smell the heliotrope in the moonlight," thus
renewing the bonds of affection between the couple.

Allusions

Shakespeare (I.246) Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe (I.189)The Bible (I.189,

I.246, U.S. Constitution (I.246), The New York Times (I.245)

7. Characterize the setting and time. How do you assess the lack of scenery
and imaginative props?

Our Town is set in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Key
scenes take place at the Gibbs and Webb houses, a drugstore counter, and the town
cemetery. The Stage Manager exists in the present, even as the scenes he shows us
exist in the early 1900’s. Our Town thus always remains contemporary and
relevant.
The play uses very little props and makes the audience use their imagination.When
Doc Gibbs walks onstage from a doctor’s call, he mimes his doctor's bag, just as
Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb pantomime cooking. People all are very different but
they all experience the same things. The daily life is mostly the same for all people
across the world.

8. Can you see yourself in characters? What do you make odd them?

It is always difficult to look at yourself from the outside. And even more so, find
yourself in another place. Of course, there are common features and behaviors, but
still each of us is unique, there are no identical people. But if we talk about General
traits of character and behavior, I like Emily, who later becomes Mrs. George
Gibbs. In the opening scenes, she is entering young womanhood. The brightest
student in her school, she is very much aware of her good qualities. At sixteen, she
is at a stage of life where she concentrates on appearance. In her conversation with
George, Emily displays a normal teenage tendency toward romanticism.

Emily is an intelligent, couth and good - mannered young girl. She is a very kind
person who is always willing. Emily helps her mother with string beans (preserve
them for the winter) and do other chores around the house. These traits of character
and behavior are not alien to me.
However, Emily's character is best revealed in Act II when she and George
discover love. Emily is an idealist. She wants George to be the best that he can be.
She is explicit in her criticism of George. Her frankness, however, results from
disappointment rather than vindictiveness. As soon as George divulges his love for
her, Emily regrets criticizing him. By the end of the scene, Emily has reversed her
opinion. As soon as she knows that she is truly George's love interest, she loses or
represses her feelings of superiority. At the wedding, Emily experiences qualms
about starting a new life with George. Her function in the wedding scene is to
suggest the universal terror that brides sometimes undergo.

But it wasn't until Act III that Emily fully revealed. After dying in childbirth and
leaving behind a four-year-old son, she hesitantly joins the spirits in the cemetery.
She cannot accept her position. Of the living, she says: "They're sort of shut up in
little boxes " Thus she notes that she, recently buried in a hillside grave, knows
more freedom than the living, who are confined and unjoined to other living
beings. They are burdened with troubles and earthly concerns to the point that they
miss the ecstasy of the moment.

It was only after death that she realized that we should appreciate everything in
life - the ticking of a clock, the smell of a sunflower, the wonder of a mother’s
love, and a thousand other little things taken for granted each day.In the final
scene, Emily, who has loved George very deeply, has attained a serenity that the
living do not possess. And comments that the living don't understand.

At first I liked Emily, then I didn't understand her, but at the end of the third scene,
I admired her. Emily is revealed throughout the play. First it is a girl, then it is a
bride and wife, then we see a woman with her true views and thoughts.

9. The role of the Stage Manager in the play. Is the narrator trustworthy?

The Stage Manager is Wilder's unique, multi-purpose invention — a part which he

himself played on the stage many times. At times he helps move scenery and even
interacts with members of the audience. But his presence permeates every scene,
whether he speaks as himself or through the persona of the druggist or minister.

The Stage Manager's most obvious role is to provide exposition of background

facts. Traditional exposition occurs when characters reveal facts about place,
setting, and plot involvement. The Stage Manager familiarizes the audience with
various aspects of Grover's Corners. Because of his omniscience, he is able to
move about freely, ignoring the usual confines of time and space. Perhaps more
important, he impels the viewer toward Emily.

He also assists the audience in judging the action and evaluating relationships.
Without his lecturing and commentary, the viewer, lacking forceful emotion or
high drama, is in danger of overlooking the significance among so many minor
details.

Beside, the Stage Manager serves as an actor. He steps into scenes and interacts
with other players. Because Wilder avoids elevating the Stage Manager above the
other characters, he makes him a believable outgrowth of town life, on a par with
any other citizen of Grover's Corners.

Finally, the Stage Manager speaks the playwright's thoughts and projects his
themes directly. When a question arises, the Stage Manager is there to answer it.
Through this invention of the Stage Manager, the viewer discovers the value of the
humblest of everyday transactions. The Stage Manager demonstrates that "an
absolute reality can only be inner, very inner " Thus, he considered as the most
important actor, as well as a structural element of the play, and also as a facilitator
of each theme.

10. What is unusual about the play?

Our Town is an unusual play in structure. It intentionally contains little action, in
order to support the theme; nothing exciting or suspenseful happens in any of the
three acts, just as nothing exciting happens in Grover’s Corners. The play also
ignores most dramatic conventions. In the beginning, the Stage Manager saunters
on to an empty stage to talk directly to the audience; he tells them that the play is
ready to begin. He then describes the appearance of Grover’s Corners and its
inhabitants.

The play also ignores the unity of time and place. Between the first and second
acts, three years pass. Then between the second and third acts, another nine years
pass. In addition, the omniscient Stage Manager has repeated flashbacks to the past
and flashforwards to the future, further negating a unity of time. The play also has
many locations. Although the entire play takes place in or around Grover’s
Corners, each act has a different and distinct key setting. In Act I, most of the
action takes place in the homes of the Webbs and the Gibbs; often the activity in
both homes is seen on stage at once, in order to emphasize the sameness of things
in this small town. The second act is set largely at the church, where Emily and
George are married. The last act is set in the cemetery outside of town and in the
home of Emily during her revisit to her twelfth birthday. Not surprisingly, these
acts are entitled by the main concern of each. Act I is called “Daily Routine,” Act
II is Love and Marriage, and the final act is called Death. In spite of the lack of
unity provided by time and location in the play, character serves as a great unifier.
The Stage Manager and Emily are seen throughout the drama.

11. How is the town itself described?

We are given a description of the life that the people there used to live in the town.
It is described as rather small. The history of the town is described by Professor
Willard. Children used to study, while people carried out their daily activities such
as delivering papers, milk etc. in order to cater for their economic needs.

12. Why is the play obsessed with statistics?

The play is really obsessed with statistics. We are told the latitude and longitude of
Grover's Corners to the minute; a professor is introduced to inform the audience
about the geological makeup of the area and several versions of the official
population. The Stage Manager points out various features of the landscape and the
town. There is no personality in numbers, however factual they are presented to be.
Grover's Corners is thus a town concocted completely without a distinct cultural
identity, consisting only in human cliches and bare statistics, each equally barren
of human color.
Wilder purposefully de-personalizes the citizens of Grover's Corners in order to
present them as blank slates. The audience is meant to see themselves in Emily and
George, and their own parents in the Webbs and Gibbs'. The very title of the play
itself emphasizes inclusivity - not my town, or your town, but our town. The events
of the narrative are the sort of things that happen to almost everyone, and the
characters don't even react in unique ways. This makes the basic moral of the story
somewhat ironic - your life isn't very special, in the grand scheme of things, so
celebrate and cherish every moment of it, because it's all you've got. Wilder, by
giving us a sort of bare template for human interaction, invites us to fill out the
drama with our own memories and experiences-to act, as it were, within the play
he is staging.

13. Is the title inclusive?

Yes, the title of the play is inclusive. Grover’s Corners, the town in which Our
Town is set, might be out in the boonies of New Hampshire and the dustbin of the
past, but by titling his play Our Town, Wilder hints that Grover’s Corners exists
outside of New Hampshire, and outside of the early 1900s, and the heroes can
exist anywhere. Even in our town. The events and themes that occupy the citizens
of Grover’s Corners are universal – hence the title, Our Town.

14. Choose a quotation and write a short essay on it.

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?

Emily asks this question of the Stage Manager at the end of Act III, after she has
revisited her twelfth birthday. The Stage Manager answers that humans indeed do
not realize life, except for perhaps the “saints and poets, maybe.” Perhaps the
play’s best-known passage, these words emphasize the value of everyday events.
Throughout the play, the characters place importance on moments of ceremony
and consequence, such as George and Emily’s wedding and Emily’s funeral. But
the characters do not seem to value or make an emotional connection to the daily
activities of their rather ordinary lives.

Instead of attempting to «realize life» at every moment, the inhabitants of Grover’s

Corners—and people the world over, by implication—often lack any sense of
wonder at what passes before their eyes every day. When Emily relives her twelfth
birthday, she futilely tries to get her mother really to look at her and not take her
presence for granted. This experience causes Emily to realize that during her own
life, she herself did not pay enough attention to detail and did not appreciate her
family. And that depicts human beings waste great opportunities at every moment
of life instead of enjoying it.
My favorite scene in the play «Our town» takes place in Act II ( Part 3)

The Stage Manager reflects on how the relationship between George and Emily
began. He explains that George has just been elected president of the senior class
for the next year and that Emily has been elected secretary-treasurer. Emily is
walking down Main Street carrying an armful of schoolbooks. George catches up
with her and asks to carry her books. He says that he is awfully glad she was
elected.

Suddenly George asks why she is angry with him. And Emily gives him an honest
answer: George has changed during the last year; he spends too much time playing
baseball, and people talk about him because he doesn't speak to anyone and acts
conceited. Emily explains that she wants men to be perfect and there is no reason
why George shouldn't be. He asks her to have an ice cream soda with him.

After being served, George exclaims that he is glad to have a friend who will tell
him all the things «that ought to be told me» Emily regrets having said anything
because she sees that her statement is not true.

George then warms to Emily, asserting that she was wrong in one aspect of her
criticism. He assures her that he has always noticed her. Whenever he plays ball,
he looks to see if she is in the bleachers. He has tried to walk home with her, but
she always seems to be with someone else. Suddenly, he wonders if, upon his
improvement, Emily will consent to be. Emily interrupts that, yes, she is already
and always has been. George tells Emily that it is really good that they had this
little talk. .

This is the central scene of Act II. It presents the simple but appealing account of
how two teenagers overcome a misunderstanding and disclose their mutual love.
The success of the scene lies in Wilder's ability to re-create a romantic scene
without cluttering it with sentiment. The scene is both honest and slightly
nostalgic, but it contains hints of the absurdity of youthful declarations of love.
The scene is delicately balanced between tenderness and the almost comic quality
found in the young people's naiveté.

In terms of the entire play, this is a love that grows out of daily life and leads to a
sensible, down-to-earth union of two people from the same background. George,
who is easily out-maneuvered by Emily's logic and poise, makes up a clumsy ruse
to cover for her tears. His manly protection of his girl from a maniac driver
presages his moving farewell at Emily's grave in Act III. Even though George fills
the role of a loyal, protective husband, he is unable to hold back death.
My opinion

The beginning was not particularly impressive. It even smacked of something

tedious and unassuming. Well, what can be so interesting in the life of a small
town, with its, in general, ordinary residents, crooked streets, modest corners,
simple provincial life? Ordinary, dull life, gossip of housewives, weddings and
funerals, births of children, love and enmity, need and wealth-nothing that could
attract a demanding reader. Nice town, that's all. There are thousands of them. An
ordinary morning in an ordinary family, there are millions of them, too. Breakfast,
shouting, the younger children complaining about the older ones, the older ones
teasing the younger ones, the mother grumbling kindly, the father pretending that it
does not concern him. Soon everyone will run away, some to school, some to
work, my mother will remain on the farm and will slowly do household chores.
Then a shopping trip, a nice chat with a neighbor. Year after year. And children
grow up. And here is an exciting event - a wedding. Yesterday's teenagers, close
neighbors, and suddenly they are a couple on the threshold of a new life. It is so
beautiful, touching and a little scary. What lies ahead for them? What future does
fate have in store for them? And that's where the third act begins. And here I
understand the full power of the author's talent. Goosebumps, shivering all over the
body, incomprehensible weakness and thoughts, a lot of thoughts, flow, then slip
away, then get confused, do not want to fit into the shelves. I'm scared, I want to
do something right now, run somewhere, talk and say nice things to my family and
friends.