Our Town Themes

A thematic view of the play “Our Town”:

In the play “Our Town” the author Thornton Wilder uses his characters to display one of the themes “Appreciate the present and live to the fullest.” In many ways people like the characters in the play don’t take the time to notice what they have around them because they live in such a routine life that they don’t notice big events. This happened in both acts one and two in the play with both the families Gibbs and Webbs.

One way that the theme is displayed is through the many characters in both acts one and two. Act one consists of two everyday families the Gibbs household and the Webb household. Each family lives a routine everyday which consists of waking up in the morning to eat and hopefully catch

Both Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Webb went to work to return home to the house chores done and supper on the table thanks to Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb. These everyday routines makes a person not pay attention to the new things in life and are blind to what they have before them. When Emily first talked to another one of the main characters George she told him everything that she had been holding inside as she watched him. She told him how he was ‘...conceited and stuck up...’ (pg 65) If Emily had not said these things that important event would not have happened. In act two both Emily and George get married making another big milestone to the small town and both the Gibbs and Webb's families. Both families knew the day was coming as they had married young like all others their age and the generations

In the intro to the play the stage manager explained the town as a small town in Grover's Corners, an imaginary town in New Hampshire. He knew who was going to live and die, who did what and where, who was going to fall in love or get married and he knew what was going on or going to happen. The stage manager explained everything in that town and showed where everything was. He explained in the beginning that ‘Nobody remarkable has come out of it, s’far as we know’ (pg 6) and that is a town to which a family can relate to.This town is filled with ordinary places that can be found in most towns like a post office or a church, train stations and a school, houses and everyday ordinary people. This town is filled with ordinary places that can be found in most towns like a post office or a church, train stations and a school, houses and everyday ordinary people. In act one the stage manager really emphasizes dawn, birth and the beginning of love between the two young teens that will later turn into marriage in the second act. He does this to show how things can be but if a town see’s it as a routine they will not pay attention to it. Neither one of the families saw this until they had to go back themselves and see how painful it was going to be for