Our Town by Thornton Wilder

Author:Thornton Wilder [Sparknotes Editors]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Study Guides
ISBN: 9781411478503
Publisher: Spark
Published: 2014-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

Analysis

Professor Willard’s and Mr. Webb’s direct addresses to the audience serve several purposes. First, the fact that the two men appear at the request of the Stage Manager establishes the Stage Manager as an almost godlike authority within the text of the play. He appears to manage everything that happens on the stage, halting the action at will, pulling characters away from their daily activities to converse with the audience, and asking them to leave the stage when their presence is no longer required. Second, Professor Willard’s and Mr. Webb’s reports, as well as Mr. Webb’s question-and-answer session, strengthen the bond between the characters and the audience. The apparently spontaneous—though actually staged—interaction between the audience and Mr. Webb indicates Wilder’s desire for the audience to feel included in the daily life of Grover’s Corners. Third, the presentation of facts about the town’s past and present complements the Stage Manager’s own omniscient knowledge of the town’s events and his foresight of the characters’ deaths. Wilder implies that an accurate understanding of the town comes not only from meeting its current inhabitants but also from knowing its history. Finally, the two reports underscore how remarkably ordinary the town is, and how racially, ethnically, religiously, and politically homogenous. Professor Willard’s geological references imply that very little has changed throughout the history of Grover’s Corners, and his mention of the stagnant birth and death rates and lack of population change suggests that little change is expected in the future.

Though the character of the town as a whole changes little over the years, individual lives are transient. In the first half of Act I, the Stage Manager reflects upon the fact that Dr. and Mrs. Gibbs and Joe Crowell, Jr. have already died by the time Our Town is performed. In the second half of Act I, time passes quickly and even the Stage Manager mistakes the time, believing it is early afternoon but then realizing it must be later, since he can hear the children on their way home from school. Additionally, the Stage Manager foreshadows the fact that the play deals with both marriage and death before the evening ends when he says that the play details the “marrying . . . living and . . . dying” of the inhabitants of Grover’s Corners. Moreover, Wilder foreshadows Emily and George’s burgeoning romance through their uneasy conversations and through Dr. Gibbs’s comment that George will soon need a larger allowance to take care of unspecified “things” associated with growing older. Wilder foreshadows Emily’s death by describing her as an exemplary scholar with great potential—just like Joe Crowell, Jr., the prized student and engineer who had great potential but was tragically killed in World War I.

A number of scholars and reviewers have criticized the homogeneity of Grover’s Corners, a largely white, Protestant town. Our Town has been derided as an escapist fantasy that ignores the realities of the racism, sexism, and economic hardship that defined American life during Wilder’s era and that continue, to some degree, to define American life today.

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