Mundanity In Small Town

Is small town life actually better than city life? Thornton Wilder tackles this question in his play, Our Town. Our Town discusses Grover’s Corners and the mundane lives of its citizens. Throughout the play, Wilder criticizes the mundanity of their lives and Grover’s Corners as a whole. He purposefully sets the town in the dull state of New Hampshire to illustrate how life continues to be the same year after year. Wilder criticizes this uneventfulness by scrutinizing the pull of the small town and compelling the audience to also do so. Wilder criticizes small town life throughout Our Town by analyzing the mundanity of rural life and the notable events of its residents and urges the audience to scrutinize the pull of a small town and speculate

Life appears the same day after day. The day always begins with a Crowell boy giving the townspeople their morning paper and afterwards Howie Newsome, the town milkman, delivering them their milk and dairy needs. Wilder uses this scene which appears twice to identify that in a small town almost nothing changes. The largest change the audience notices is the change of the paperboy. The change is almost insignificant as it is just a younger brother taking over for his older brother once the older brother leaves town for college. Wilder uses the mundanity and the ordinariness of a simple paperboy to criticize early twentieth century small town lifestyle. He uses the words of Joe Crowell discussing his teacher’s impending betrothment, “Well, of course it ain’t none of my business—but I think if a person starts out to be a teacher she ought to stay one.” In making this comment, Wilder urges the audience to discover that small towns like their banal lifestyle. The quote is also used to demonstrate that in a small town it is normal to have an opinion on everything happening in the community. In fact, small towns have become known for their gossiping and Wilder supports this belief both with Crowell as well as later in Act I with the conversation amongst Mrs. Gibbs, Mrs. Webb, and Mrs. Soames. Mrs. Soames states “It’s the worst scandal that was ever in this town!” referring to Simon Stimson alcoholism and

Is it people sharing in political and religious beliefs? This is Wilder’s case in Our Town, where politically it is 86% Republican and 6% Democrat and religiously it is 85% Protestant and 12% Catholic. Wilder uses this cultural cluster as another way to describe Grover’s Corners as Mr. Webb describes it, “very ordinary…Little better behaved than most. Probably a lot duller.” This comment counsels the audience to examine his/her own life and ponder on the closed mindedness of small town life and analyze if it is really so desirable. Wilder uses this closed mindedness idea to criticize small town life even farther, but the audience speculates that buried under the criticism is adoration for the simplicity of rural life. The overall essence of Wilder’s argument is that in small town life there are some things to be idealized, but there are many parts of small town life brought to life in Our Town that should be