Life In Small-Town Grover's Corners In Our Town By Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder’s simplistic play Our Town tells the story of life in small-town Grover’s Corners. The play follows Emily Webb in her childhood, marriage and eventual death. Wilder describes the play as “an attempt to find a value above all price for the smallest events in our daily life”; throughout the play, Wilder is successful in this attempt. Initially, Act I seems meaningless as it portrays the mundane moments of two neighboring families in a small town; however, during Act II and III the importance of these moments is revealed. Each small event in Emily’s life has a ripple effect, influencing the greater moments in her life—such as her wedding. Her flirting with George, helping him with homework answers, and receiving birthday gifts from him all seem like everyday gestures; yet, after Act II these all have a greater

For instance, a letter Jane Crofut receives has an address extending far past the standard street, city, and state; it reads, “Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe; the Mind of God” (46). This puts every person in the universe into the play, and shows how small Grover’s Corners or any other town or even country really is. Additionally, when the town decides to bury a time capsule, a copy of this play is included. The stage manager points out the universal similarities of everyday life that this play conveys; an American in the early 1900s has a family they sit down to dinner with just like a Babylonian. The universality of Grover’s Corners is also acknowledged when editor Webb lists the town’s statistics, “eighty-six percent Republicans… twelve percent Catholic”; these are no more than numbers, and anyone can be put into a statistic (24). By putting Grover’s Corners in a grand context of time and space, Wilder is able to achieve a sense of universality throughout the