Are Dreams Worth Living In The Play Our Town By Thornton Wilder

1268 Words6 Pages

Fatima Afrose
Miss Kloth
English 8 HP
28 October 2020
Are dreams worth living? In all plays, books, stories, or pieces of text, the author has a purpose for writing their story. In Our Town, the same can be said for Thornton Wilder, the author of the play, Our Town. Thornton Wilder’s main purpose for writing this play is to help the reader realize things about their own life, such as how they should be living it. The play hints towards the idea that people should try to live their lives to the fullest. This idea is presented throughout the whole play in various ways. One way this is presented in is throughout the characters. In the drama, Our Town, the author, Thornton Wilder, uses the three characters, the Stage Manager, Emily, and Simon …show more content…

The author uses this character to show the readers that the people in this play do the same things in life every day, opposing his main point, to lead the readers to the conclusion that people should live their dreams. In Our Town, Act Three, Simon Stimson angrily declares to those around him, “To spend and waste time as though you had a million years” (Thornton Wilder 109). Simon Stimson is talking about the live people and what it was like to live, he is saying that live people waste their lives doing the same things repeatedly day after day. They do their household chores, they follow their schedules, and they do these things everyday. Simon does not think these people are living their lives since he calls what they are doing “wasting” their lives. Relating to what Simon Stimson said, “A Man From Among The Dead” proclaims soon after, “And my boy, Joel, who knew the stars-he used to say it took millions of years for that speck o’ light to git to the earth” (Thornton Wilder 110). Before, Simon was saying that people live as if they have a million years, but stars, in fact, do have millions of years to live, billions even. Even though stars actually have the time humans wished they had, stars spend their lives according to their schedule, charted out from them as soon as they formed. This shows that no matter if you have a million years or just one day, you should still live your life as you see fit. Life may seem eternal, but it is our souls that are, so we should have happy things to think of, happy memories to keep with us, even in