Journal #5: Our Town

Section 1: Knowledge and Understanding (Outside of Class Response) 

“The sky is beginning to show some streaks of light over in the East there, behind our mount’in.

The morning star always gets wonderfully bright the minute before it has to go --- doesn’t it?”

(4)

Thornton Wilder’s Our Town begins with these two sentences, capturing the essence of us as human beings. To put it in simple words, we are always so concentrated on ways to push ourselves to higher levels, to satisfy our ambitions, that we forget the preciousness of life itself. Although we always lament over how life is too short and how it ends too quickly, the true tragedy is that we wait too long to begin it. Early on in our lives, we start to understand that there are standards in society, expectations of who we’re suppose to be.  Emily, introduced to us as a young girl of fifteen, questions her mother about her beauty, “’Am I pretty enough … to get anybody … to get people interested in me?’” (32). She has learned at an young age that in order for people to be “interested in [her]”, she has to be what others want her to be, and in this case, it is to be pretty and beautiful.

In Act I, during an interaction between Mr. Webb and a member of the play’s audience, Mr. Webb comments, “’Seems like they spend most of their time talking about who’s rich and who’s poor.’” (25). Here, Wilder once again addresses the theme of how our lifetime is filled with insignificances such as riches, and it is not until we are towards the end of our life, do we realize how much we’ve missed out in during our meaningless quarrels. In our society, we are so driven to satisfy others by being someone else, to the point that we forget who we truly are.

Even the NHS (National Honor Society) applications that the sophomores of my grade have begun filling out outlines what the society wants from us. NHS is composed of four pillars – scholarship, leadership, service, and character. I have spent time upon time trying to come up with these lists of these “accomplishments” – awards, competitions, certificates - that would please the council of NHS. Yet it has come across my mind for more than once, that maybe I am not a natural leader with lines after lines of leadership awards, maybe that I am an introvert more comfortable with listening and whispering my ideas in my mind. So I ask myself, do I really have to be what society wants me to be in order to be “honored”?

In the first scenes of Act II, years after the time period of Act I, the manager says, “Some babies that weren’t even born before have begun talking regular sentences already; and a number of people who thought they were right young and spry have noticed that they can’t bound up a flight of stairs like they used to, without their heart fluttering a little” (47). These are the people who have started to notice that time is flying past fast, but yet to understand how to live their life to their own will. Wilder is building upon this theme of cherishing life while we can, so we don’t look back and regret the things that we could’ve done but didn’t do.

Section 2: Analysis and Interpretation 

“Well, I’d btter show you how our town lies. Up here – is Main Street. Way back there is the railway station; tracks to that way. Polish Town’s across the tracks, and some Canuck families...

Along here’s a row of stores. Hitching posts and horse blocks in front of them. First automobile’s going to come along in about five years – belonged to Banker Cartwright, our riches citizen… lives in the big white house up on the hill. Here’s the grocery store and here’s Mr. Morgan’s drugstore. Most everybody in town manages to look into those two stores once a day. Public School’s over yonder. High School’s still farther over. Quarter of nine mornings, noontimes, and three o’clock afternoons, the hull town can hear the yelling and screaming from those schoolyards.”

Nice town, y’know what I mean?

Nobody very remarkable ever come out of it, s’far as we know

Here comes Howie Newsome, delieverin’ the milk

‘Morning, Doc.’

‘Morning Howie.’

‘Somebody sick?’

‘Pair of twins over to Mrs. Goruslawski’s’

‘Twins, eh? This town’s gettin’ bigger every year.’”

(4-10)

This passage, from the very beginning of the first act, introduces us to Wilder’s writing style and how it adds on to the play. In the beginning of the first scene of the first act, the stage manager introduces the town to us, and casually comments about the plainness of the town, observing the lack of “remarkable people” that come out of it. Here, Wilder’s lack of detail in description of the town settings make it applicable to the audience, allowing them to use their own imagination to conjure up the picturesque town in their minds.

Throughout the play, Thornton Wilder works towards establishing a mood of simplicity in the quaint town in which the play takes place, and uses his characters to add on to the atmosphere. He builds up the narrator – the stage manager – as a friendly figure who refers to the setting, audience, and other characters with casual tones, such as “’Well, I’d better show you how our town lies’” (4), or “Here comes Howie Newsome, deliverin’ the milk’” (10). Wilder grants his characters with an almost southern dialect, with vocabulary such as “somep’n” and “’twas”, adds on to the tone of the story, giving the audience a feeling of a town of easy going people living simple lives.

Wilder uses the interesting technique of involving the “audience” to indirectly provide more background information about the town. He interrupts Act I with a “Q and A session” between the characters and audience. When a member of the audience questions the “culture or love of beauty in Grover’s Corners” (26), Mr. Webb replies with the comment “Well, ma’am, there ain’t much – not in the sense you mean. Come to think of it, there’s some girls that play the piano at the High School Commencement; but they ain’t happy about it. Nom ma’am, there isn’t much culture; but maybe this is the place to tell you that we’ve got a lot of pleasures of a kind here: we like the sun comin’ up over the mountain in the morning, and we notice a good deal about the birds. We pay a lot of attention to them. And we watch the change of the seasons; yes, everybody knows about them” (26). In this staged interaction, Wilder reveals more of the town’s simplicity, of how the townspeople, although aren’t as cultured, are great appreciators of nature’s beauty, adding on to the rustic atmosphere.

Although Wilder’s writing in style in Our Town may not be extremely smart or sophisticated sounding, it adds the element of simplicity that is very refreshing to the audience. 

Section 3: Knowledge and Understanding (In Class Response) 

Critics have said that Thornton Wilder is able to “transform the simple events of everyday existence into universal truths." How is this true? 

In Thornton Wilder’s Our town, the author is able to relate his characters to the audiences of his play through the simple events of everyday existence. He captures in detail the very mundane things – an interaction between two characters, or even a snippet of a conversation – and builds dynamic characters of whom the audience can understand.

In Act II of the play, the characters Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs are engaged in a conversation right before George and Emily’s wedding. They talk about their fears prior to their wedding, “‘I was afraid we wouldn’t have material for conversation more’n’d last us a few weeks’ ‘I was afraid we’d run out and eat our meals in silence, that’s a fact – Well, you and I been conversing for twenty years now without any noticeable barren spells.’ ‘ Well, - good weather, bad weather – ‘tain’t very choice, but I always find something to say’” (55). This fragment of conversation between two characters reflects a common anxiety in all of us – let’s face it, we’re frightened of silences, terrified of them. Through this simple reflection of a “universal truth”, the author is able to build a connection between the characters and his audience.