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Compare And Contrast Essay On Our Town

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Amely Nuñez
Mr. Flood
English 12H
16 February 2023
Grief is Love’s Best Friend Although there are infinite factors that make a story unique, there always seems to be a common piece throughout the lines of each one that unify them. Grief is found consistently throughout works of literature, especially when there is love. Humans unconsciously are in a pursuit of love and along the way they can be met with grief. Grief can take many forms, but it always deals with our inability to have something we desire. Our Town, a play by Thornton Wilder, “Because I Could Not Stop For Death”, a poem by Emily Dickinson, and Pride and Prejudice, a novel by Jane Austen, all have this centerpiece in common. Our Town is a three-act play that tells the …show more content…

“Life and death are part of a whole and yet in constant conflict, as are love and hate. The results are both honest and profound” (“Review of Our Town” 441). Love and hate are both very prevalent in the world and all they truly are is a lack of the other. Love is a lack of hate and vice versa. Ultimately, they are both intertwined to each other by the fact that they are truths in our life that cannot be separated. Life and mortality tend to be just as intertwined as well with one not being able to exist without the other. John Mason Brown reflected on this idea, saying, “Our Town deals with the beautiful and progressing cycle of life. Life ultimately leads to death and through death is where one achieves eternal life” (439). The transition from life to death in Our Town, like with Emily’s life, portrays how one’s life does not necessarily end once one takes his or her final breath; Living alongside one another is only one part of the big complexity that is existence. Humans, including the citizens in Our Town, tend to forget that their mortality will not eradicate their existence. Instead, they linger on this fallacy and end up wasting time in unnecessary grievances. Brown explains this, saying, “Those who have lived will say grieving is a waste of time. People spend so much time grieving when they could be using it to actually be living instead” (442). It is in letting go of the love and attachment that people have to their worldly life that they can truly start to begin to fully experience immortal

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