Our Town (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
By Thornton Wilder and SparkNotes
()
About this ebook
Making the reading experience fun!
Created by Harvard students for students everywhere, SparkNotes is a new breed of study guide: smarter, better, faster. Geared to what today's students need to know, SparkNotes provide: *Chapter-by-chapter analysis
*Explanations of key themes, motifs, and symbols
*A review quiz and essay topics
Lively and accessible, these guides are perfect for late-night studying and writing papers
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) was an accomplished novelist and playwright whose works, exploring the connection between the commonplace and cosmic dimensions of human experience, continue to be read and produced around the world. His Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of seven novels, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928, as did two of his four full-length dramas, Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1943). Wilder's The Matchmaker was adapted as the musical Hello, Dolly! He also enjoyed enormous success with many other forms of the written and spoken word, among them teaching, acting, the opera, and films. (His screenplay for Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943] remains a classic psycho-thriller to this day.) Wilder's many honors include the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Book Committee's Medal for Literature.
Read more from Thornton Wilder
Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ides of March: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Three Plays: Our Town, The Matchmaker, and The Skin of Our Teeth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Skin of Our Teeth: A Play Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabala Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Cabala and The Woman of Andros: Two Novels Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bridge of San Luis Rey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cabala Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bridge of San Luis Rey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Our Town (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
Related ebooks
A Study Guide for William Saroyan's "The Time Of Your Life" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Sherwood Anderson's "Sophistication" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Robert E. Sherwood's "The Petrified Forest" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Importance of Being Ernest: The Life of Actor Jim Varney (Stuff that Vern doesn't even know) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Daisy Miller (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for James Joyce's "Leslie Marmon Silko's Dead" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Henry James's "Wings of the Dove" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJames Dean: Rebel Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAfter the Fire: Love and Hate in the Ashes of 1967 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe End of the Web Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Importance of Being Earnest (SparkNotes Literature Guide) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn American Comedy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Son, My Son Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Mike Rowe's The Way I Heard It Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for John Osborne's "Inadmissible Evidence" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for August Wilson's "Radio Golf" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMetaphorosis March 2017 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Admirable Crichton (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer SparkNotes Literature Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Game of Snakes and Ladders Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Best Friend Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Return of the Soldier (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSix of the Best by F Scott Fitzgerald Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJohn Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Expectations by Charles Dickens (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magic of Believing: A Lansbury Family Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Book Notes For You
Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence | Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker: Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Midnight Library: A Novel by Matt Haig: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O'Neill: Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor: Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Good Energy by Casey Means:The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Summary of Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Ichiro Kishimi's and Fumitake Koga's book: The Courage to Be Disliked: Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 5 AM Club Summary: Business Book Summaries Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez: Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success by Darren Hardy: Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of 12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eight Dates: Essential Conversations for a Lifetime of Love by John Gottman: Conversation Starters Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Summary of Poverty, by America By Matthew Desmond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Our Town (SparkNotes Literature Guide)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Our Town (SparkNotes Literature Guide) - Thornton Wilder
Context
T
hornton Wilder was born
in Madison, Wisconsin, in
1897
. He attended Oberlin College in Ohio and then transferred to Yale University, graduating in
1920
. After spending a year in Rome, he took a job teaching French at a prep school in New Jersey and started writing on the side. Wilder published his first novel, The Cabala, in
1926
, but his first real taste of fame came when he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (
1927
). The royalties from this novel allowed him to quit his teaching job, and he began to write full-time. Wilder quickly became a literary celebrity, keeping company with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein.
In the ideologically charged climate of the
1930
s, however, Wilder came under attack from critics who branded his work escapist fare that refused to confront the gloomy reality of the Depression. Hurt by this criticism and frustrated by the failure of his
1934
novel Heaven’s My Destination, Wilder turned to playwriting. Our Town, his most celebrated dramatic effort, opened on Broadway in
1938
to rave reviews. Audiences sensed the universality of the themes presented in the play, which enabled virtually every theatergoer to participate in the action onstage and identify with the characters. Our Town eventually won Wilder his second Pulitzer Prize, and went on to become one of the most performed American plays of the twentieth century.
In many ways, Our Town is Wilder’s response to his critics. Major works from other American writers of the time—notably Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio—exposed the buried secrets, hypocrisy, and oppression lurking beneath the surface of American small town life. In Our Town, however, Wilder presents a far more celebratory picture of a small town, the fictional hamlet of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. Wilder does not deny the fact that the town suffers from social injustice and hypocrisy, and he does not intend to idealize Grover’s Corners as a bastion of uncompromising brotherly love. On the contrary, Wilder makes a point to include in the play characters who criticize small town life, and Grover’s Corners specifically. However, Wilder does not wish to denounce the community simply because it contains some strains of hypocrisy. Instead, he peers into Grover’s Corners in order to find lessons about life in a world that contains both virtue and vice. He tenderly tracks the residents’ day-to-day activities, their triumphs and their sorrows, their casual conversations and their formal traditions—not because he wants to praise New Hampshire, but because he wants to praise humanity. Perhaps a political message in itself, Our Town privileges the study of human life and its complexities over blatantly political works that point fingers, stereotype others, and otherwise divide people from one another.
Wilder’s principal message in Our Town—that people should appreciate the details and interactions of everyday life while they live them—became critical at a time when political troubles were escalating in Europe. World War II was on the horizon when the play hit theaters in
1938
. It was a time of tremendous international tension, and citizens across the globe suffered from fear and uncertainty. Our Town directed attention away from these negative aspects of life in the late
1930
s and focused instead on the aspects of the human experience that make life precious. Wilder revealed his faith in the stability and constancy of life through his depiction and discussion of the small town of Grover’s Corners, with its marrying . . . living and . . . dying.
The
1920
s and
1930
s proved to be the heyday of Wilder’s career. He enlisted as a soldier and served in Europe during World War II, and though he continued his literary career upon his return to the United States, his output decreased during the next two decades. A later effort to write a novel, The Eighth Day (
1967
), met with mixed reviews. Wilder died in December
1975
at his home in Connecticut.
Plot Overview
O
ur Town
is introduced and narrated by the Stage Manager, who welcomes the audience to the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, early on a May morning in
1901
. In the opening scene, the stage is largely empty, except for some tables and chairs that represent the homes of the Gibbs and Webb families, the setting of most of the action in Act I. The set remains sparse throughout the rest of the play.
After the Stage Manager’s introduction, the activities of a typical day begin. Howie Newsome, the milkman, and Joe Crowell, Jr., the paperboy, make their delivery rounds. Dr. Gibbs returns from delivering a set of twins at one of the homes in town. Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb make breakfast, send their children off to school, and meet in their gardens to gossip. The two women also discuss their modest ambitions, and Mrs. Gibbs reveals that she longs to visit Paris.
Throughout the play, the characters pantomime their activities and chores. When Howie makes his milk deliveries, for example, no horse appears onstage despite the fact that he frequently addresses his horse as Bessie.
Howie does not actually hold anything in his hands, but he pantomimes carrying bottles of milk, and the sound of clinking milk bottles comes