Drama Club: Themes & Questions to Think About

Here's a site with lots of info about the characters in Our Town.

Themes
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Theme 1: People should appreciate life while they are living it. Even ordinary, uneventful activities are important. Indeed, they might be the most important activities of all–whether they involve smelling flowers, eating breakfast, chatting with the milkman or the paperboy, or looking out the window at the moon.
Theme 2: Carpe diem (seize the day). This Latin phrase, which has become part of the English language, urges people to live for the moment, seizing opportunities to enjoy or enrich their lives. Life is short, after all; such opportunities may present themselves only once. This is an old literary motif, written about many times over the centuries. The Roman poet Horace (65-8 B.C.) coined the phrase carpe diem in Book 1 of his famous odes, when he advised people to “seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow!” English poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) repeated the sentiment in a memorable poem:
.......Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
.......Old time is still a-flying,
.......And this same flower that smiles today
.......Tomorrow will be dying.
In Our Town, Wilder reminds the audience again and again that time is “a-flying” with references to passing trains–which, like life, move swiftly forward–and with references to the generations of Grover’s Corners residents who have come and gone. The flowers in the gardens of Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb are still another reminder: Smell and appreciate them now, for they will not last long. So is Professor Willard’s boring speech about the geological and anthropological developments in the vicinity of Grover's Corners thousands of years ago. The wheel of history and its life cycles spins rapidly. However, "seizing the day" does not necessarily mean that people need to pursue lofty enterprises or careers or to run off to see the world. George Gibbs seizes the day by choosing to marry Emily rather than going to agricultural school. Mrs. Gibbs seizes the day by accepting the simple life of Grover's Corners rather than insisting that her husband go on vacation with her to the city of her dreams, Paris.
Theme 3: Little things in life are really big things. This theme points out that seemingly insignificant happenings in everyday life are actually among the most important ones. However, people experiencing them usually do not comprehend this truth at the time, as Emily observes in the cemetery when she says to Mrs. Gibbs, “They don’t understand, do they?
Theme 4: No town can isolate itself from the rest of the world. Grover's Corners is a pleasant, easygoing community that seems to be a separate world unto itself. But it is not. Rather, it spins on the same axis as the rest of the world and is subject to the same influences affecting outsiders. Its residents read Shakespeare and The New York Times. Trains going to Boston pass through regularly. And there comes a time when Ford cars replace horses and people begin to lock their doors, just like their big-city counterparts. Joe Crowell Jr., dies in World War I. English poet John Donne wrote in 1624:
.......No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
........ . . any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never
.......send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Grover's Corners is not an island. And when the bell tolls for Emily at the end of the play, it tolls for everyone.
Theme 5: No community is perfect, not even idyllic Grover's Corners. Grover's Corners has its town drunk, Simon Stimson, whom Mrs. Soames says is a "scandal." Believing life is not worth living, he commits suicide. Grover's Corners also apparently has a form of segregation, for there is a "ghetto," Polish town, where Polish-American Catholics live.

Things to Think About

1. In what ways is your hometown like Grover's Corners? In what ways is your town different?
2. If you were to make a movie based on Our Town, would you include elaborate sets or retain the spare sets, with few props? Explain your answer.
3. The stage manager speaks directly to the audience. How effective is this approach?
4. At the end of the play, Emily says, “Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” Which are among the "wonderful" things about earth and life that you fail to notice?
5. The stage manager says young Joe Crowell graduated at the top of his class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yet Crowell never got a chance to put his education to use, for he died in combat during World War I. In commenting on Crowell's death, the stage manager says, "All that education for nothin’." Was his education, in fact, for nothing? Is the stage manager's comment intended to be an antiwar statement? As best you can from details provided in the play, describe Joe Crowell.
6. The stage manager thinks it would be a good idea to place a time capsule in the new bank under construction. In the capsule, he would place a copy of The Sentinel, The New York Times, the U.S. Constitution, the Bible, Shakespeare’s works, and the text of the play he is participating in, Our Town. What is the significance of these items in terms of what they tell you about Grover's Corners?
7. What does Mrs. Soames mean when she says, "My, wasn’t life awful–and wonderful"?