Thornton Wilder

Life in Our Town

Thornton Wilder was born on April 17, 1897 in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the second child of Amos and Isabella Wilder. Thornton attended an English-speaking school, but returned to America with his mother and siblings when political conditions in China grew unstable. Thornton became interested in theater and writing in California. He enrolled at Oberlin College, but transferred to Yale University in 1914. Thornton volunteered for first Coast Artillery in Rhode Island while the United State was drown into World War I. He received a bachelor’s degree from Yale and He published his first play, The Trumpet Shall Sound, in the Yale Literary Magazine. Throughout his life, he read widely in English, French, and spoke in Italian and Spanish. His first novel, The Cabala, was published in 1926 and received lukewarm reviews. His second novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, proved immensely popular and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Thornton did a lot of Broadway like A Doll’s House and Our Town. Thornton Wilder wrote plays and lectured at various universities. Wilder never referred to his homosexuality, but some believed that he had one or two affairs with younger men and a male lover in his later years. He died in his sleep on December 7, 1975, of an apparent heart attack in Hamden, Connecticut at the age 78 years old (Nienhuis,1).

Our Town welcomes the audience to the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire on early morning in May 1901. The opening scene, the represent the homes of the Gibbs and Webb families. The Daily Life, the normal daily activates in a small town in New Hampshire. The Stage Manager tells the audience where the main buildings in the town are located and gives the audience facts about Grover’s Corners. The Stage Manager introduction us the Webb’s and Gibbs’s families. The scene show the milkman and paperboy arrived. The each families getting ready for breakfast. Each mothers tries to get their children up, fed up, and off to school. The mothers started chat after their children leave for school. The Stage Manager came back and stating some more fact about Grover’s Corners. By this town, Emily and George came back from school. George had trouble with his homework. Emily is the best student in her class. They arrange a way that Emily can help George. The Stage Manager came back and gives more fact about the town. The mothers from different families, Mrs.Webbs and Mrs. Gibbs go attend weekly choir rehearsal. They noticed about the organist’s drinking (Wilder, 5-45). Its shows three years later, the mothers are prepared a wedding for George and Emily (Wilder, 46-78). Nine years later, the scene shows a cemetery on a hilltop that overlooking the town. Emily had passed away in childbirth. They are buried her. Everybody is upset and hurt. Emily joined the dead but misses her pervious life. Emily revisits her past. Emily realizes that something was not