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Brief Summary Of The Play Our Town

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Our Town is a three-act play written by Thornton Wilder which guides the audience through a typical day in Grover’s Corners, a traditional American town in New Hampshire. In Act I, the Stage Manager introduces us to Dr. Gibbs who lives with his wife, his son George, and his daughter Rebecca in an archetypical American family household. They live next to the similar Webb family household where Mr. Webb lives with his wife, his daughter Emily, and his son Wally. In the mornings, both families send their children off to school after breakfast. At night, Emily, George, and Rebecca talk to one another through their windows while the choir sings in the background. In Act II, three years have passed and George and Emily are about to get married. George visits his mother-and-father-in-law and talks about his devotion towards Emily and his future. …show more content…

George decides to sacrifice going to college and studying farm industry for his and Emily’s future. The scene is brought back to the couple’s doubts and insecurities of marriage and resolves when Emily walks down the aisle with her father and marries George. Act III takes place nine years after the wedding at Emily’s funeral, who died after giving birth to their second child. Characters that have died in the past wait at the cemetery in town. Emily cannot accept her death and decides to revisit her 12th birthday, which becomes unbearable and painful after she realizes that people should learn to treasure every moment of their life. Act III resolves when Emily returns to her grave and watches as George arrives and mourns over her

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Soames is still seen full of interest regarding the lives of those around her. She does not dwell on the misfortunes, but instead focuses on the positive aspects of life (“My, wasn’t life awful- and wonderful.” Act III). Mrs. Soames recalls Emily’s accomplishments, such as her wedding and graduation. When Emily insists on returning to the world of the living, Mrs. Soames advises her against it, as she knows that Emily will be disappointed and hurt.

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-“And now Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the cedar-bemused cemetery. . .” (Faulkner I). -“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care,” (Faulkner I). -“. . .dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity,” (Faulkner I).

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Emily is filled with guilt and regret as her actions of disobeyment towards her mother had led her to substantial consequences that she will hold onto for the rest of her life. In conclusion, Emily is hurt with her own consequences and is now left helpless with her own thoughts and pain, although now she continuously grows as she is aware of the impacts of her decisions which allows her to gain lessons in a new

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After her father’s death, Emily insisted that her father “was not dead… for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body” (Faulkner). This suggests that Emily was unable to accept her father’s death and that she had been experiencing severe symptoms of denial as a result of her trauma. This denial mainly stems from the physical abuse and emotional control her father had placed on Emily, both contributing to her isolation from society and leading to her eventual death. Despite the differences between the stories, both represent the severe effects of trauma and how it can lead to the tragic downfall of one’s

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Both Emily and Robert are prematurely judged by the narrators in both stories, and the assumptions are so far fetched from the reality. Miss. Emily is perceived to be a lonely old woman, whom nobody ever spoke with. Since they never talk with her or learn anything about what is going on in her life, the townspeople begin to gossip to make up for this. They knew her father had driven away any man from becoming close to her, and they just thought to themselves, “ poor Emily” (32).

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Our Town Biblical Essay Our Town is a play that starts from the teenage years and ends in the afterlife, along with marriage in the middle. Death seems to be described as waiting on earth until Jesus returns to take us to heaven. Therefore, Our Town does have a biblical viewpoint. Back then it was not as easy to know all of the different religions as it is today.

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Miss Emily’s father dies, she finds a suitor, and buys poison, then shuts herself and her

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Section I functions as a recollection of memory, as the narrator recalls the funeral of Emily, describing her death as a “fallen monument”, and her life as “a tradition, a duty, and a care”, setting up the plot for later conflicts and events that exemplify her life and death as such. The section also introduces symbols of southern tradition such as “when Colonel Sartoris…remitted her taxes” to introduce Emily’s strong upholding of tradition and her connections to the few characters that have severely influenced her life and values. Section II builds upon the ideas mentioned in Section I, but takes place 30

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To compare, Faulkner shares a slice of evidence as to why Emily has an uncontrollable obsession for the dead, “After her father 's death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all.” (Faulkner) Given these points, her father becomes arrogant and isolates her from society, or anyone who is willing to take Miss Emily from him. When her father, the only man in the world who has loved her,

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However, the love is unrequited which leaves Emily in a crisis because she is terrified of being alone. Before he can leave her, Emily kills him and keeps his body in her bed for the years to come. The narrator describes, "the body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long

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“A Rose for Emily” is a dark, suspenseful Gothic tale in which a young girl is put on a pedestal by a town who sees her as haughty and scornful. Miss Emily Grierson’s father controls her and her love life, pushing away all people until he dies and Emily is left alone. As her life goes on the townspeople watch her and judge Emily, almost turning her life into a spectacle to be talked about. At her death, a gruesome sight is unfolded when her lover of over forty years ago is found decomposed in her upstairs room. William Faulkner effectively builds epic suspense in “A Rose for Emily” by the unchronological order of the story, the treatment of Emily’s father towards her, and her family’s history of mental illness.

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I. To begin with, we will analyze section one and learn some background information. In the A Rose for Emily, the narrator is recalling Emily’s funeral by saying “…when Miss Emily Grierson died our whole town went to the funeral…” (Mays 629). The narrator talks about Emily’s house before when she was alive.

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He also shows the relationship between Emily and her dead father and how Emily cannot let go of people that show a love interest in her or the people who look after her in that she must be attached to them even after death. Faulkner depicts an Emily that was once young and vibrant, who maintained the Grierson home and kept it in a pristine condition. Faulkner relays to readers that because Emily was unable to control her own destiny and was powerless under her father’s hand, she became a recluse and ultimately went into a downward spiral. After sensing and believing that her first real love will leave her, Emily purchases arsenic and it is believed that she will kill herself because there is no point in living if no one will love her

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As in most of his works one of the overbearing ideals of A Rose For Emily is a sense of class and of elegance that was as evident as the sky in the South. The main character of the story, Miss Emily Grierson, is William’s way of exemplifying this bygone way of life in a more modern era; and both Nicole and I agree that this is the main plot in the story. Throughout A Rose For Emily the idea of monuments and age are extremely prevalent as both Miss Emily and her homestead are commonly referred to as, “relic.”

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Emily is judged for loving a man who is less fortunate than her . In the following line the townspeople’s reactions to their relationship is obvious, “’Poor Emily’, the whispering began. ‘Do you suppose it’s really so?’ they said to one another” (102). The townspeople did not to much care for the relationship between the two because of the barriers set up by social class saying poor date the poor and rich date the rich.

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