Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay on the stages of life
Essay on the stages of life
Stages of life
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Essay on the stages of life
Our Town Our Town written by Thornton Wilder is a short three act play that goes through the stages of life with one couple and those around them. The story takes place in a small town called Grover’s Corner. The town is isolated, but everyone knows everyone and they farm and take care of eachother. Throughout the book, you are taken through George and Emily’s life together, from childhood, to marriage, and eventually to death. The main character in this story is unique and something that is not expected, a stage manager. Throughout the book, the stage manager talked like he was in front of an audience and explained backstories. One of the biggest themes that I picked up on in Our Town was the stages of life and how you should appreciate everyday that you have. The theme was developed through the characters of George and Emily. …show more content…
He did not realise how stuck up he was though until Emily mentioned it to him one day. His major character development begins in the first stage of George and Emily’s life together. George and Emily had been neighbors their whole lives. George liked Emily and Emily liked George, but they never talked about it until one day when George approached Emily and offered to carry her books, eventually leading them to Mr. Morgans drugstore where they drank ice-cream sodas. During this time George said that once you have found a person that you like and they like you back, that is more important than college. This marked the start of their relationship and their journey through life. On the morning of George and Emily’s wedding, Mrs. Gibbs said in Act II that people are meant to go through life two by two showing how important this was in their small town. During the wedding, George and Emily both became nervous, especially Emily. George said that he was willing to get married and love her, which closed their second stage of
The major themes of the book are directly related to the themes which John Demos uses to tell this story. The storyline moves on though the evolution of one theme to the next. The function of these major sections is to allow the reader to relate to John Williams overall state of mind as the story unfold. By implementing these major themes into his work, John Demos make it possible for the reader to fully understand the story from beginning to end.
One example of the theme occurs when the author first introduces the story. “But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place.” (pg. 1). The author is saying that the year she turned nine, she found out something about her town that broke her heart and changed the way she saw it. This quote is important because it supports the theme. It shows that now she is older she has learned something about her town that made her wiser than when she was younger. She is now more informed because the new information changed her and caused her to begin to mature.
Behind George’s impulsive enigma you can see just how much he wants to be accepted and make friends. Isolated and lonely, George bullied children who were smaller than him and appeared as ‘easy targets’ because deep down he didn't feel good about himself and wanted to be accepted due to his learning difficulties and other assorted problems. George readily agrees to the invitation to Sam’s birthday, seeing the trip as an opportunity to finally make friends. You see a glimpse of his caring nature when he gives Sam a birthday present, using all his savings to purchase him a water pistol, and ensuring he likes it. However, he was unaware of the true purpose of his invitation by the resentful Sam, forcing you to sympathise further on George and expressing his innocence and desperation to form friendships. This is further demonstrated later in the film where he lies and tells the group that he smokes cigarettes in hopes to be accepted in the group and appear as ‘cool’ by doing the things they
Ordinary actions piece together to form extraordinary lives. Written by Thornton Wilder in 1938, Our Town is a play acted with minimal scenery to give the viewer a greater opportunity to imagine their own town. Set in 1901 in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, Our Town documents the lives and interactions of two families— the Gibbs and the Webbs. Acted in three parts that all describe the smallest actions that we complete everyday without noticing, the first act shows the “Daily Life,” the second act demonstrates love and marriage found in life, and the third shows death and the end of one’s life. Wilder’s purpose of writing Our Town is to explain how daily, habitual actions come together without us noticing and to help demonstrate that those
Thornton Wilder effectively demonstrates the importance of life’s repetition in Our Town through the cycle of life, George and Emily’s love, and the playing of “Blessed Be the Tie that Binds.” The cycle of life is shown repeating from birth to life to death and back to birth again. George and Emily’s love is repetitious and unending, even after the death of Emily, which demonstrates the importance of life. As “Blessed Be the Tie that Binds” is recurrently heard throughout the play, it serves as a bridge through a void of time or place, which is important in understanding the play. It is no wonder that Wilder achieved a Pulitzer Prize for his in-depth work of life.
Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is a work of “sentimental fiction” because it connects all the people living in the small town of Grover’s Corners. In a small town like Grover’s Corners everybody knows each other within the town, so there is a deeper connection of companionship, friendship, and love within the town. The residents of Grover’s Corners constantly take time out of their days to connect with each other, whether through idle chat with the milkman or small talk with a neighbor. So when love and marriage or death happens in the town, it will affect the majority Grover’s Corners residents. The most prominent interpersonal relationship in the play is a romance—the courtship and marriage of George Gibbs and Emily Webb. Wilder suggests that
People always say how they would love to live in a small town. That they love the feeling of unity and being close with everyone in the city. In Our Town, Wilder (the author) infers to the fact that the town endures zero privacy (everyone knows everyone’s business), expectations, and people seem to be going through the motions of life, and he does not intend to idealize Grover’s Corners as an establishment of uncompromising brotherly love. Wilder makes a point to include in the play characters who criticize small town life, and Grover’s Corners specifically. I believe that Our Town is a criticism of small town life because there is no personal privacy and people go through life hoping to live up to everyone else’s expectations, missing life’s moments of happiness.
M.marries N.millions of them. The cottage, the go-cart, the Sunday-afternoon drives in the Ford, the first rheumatism, the grandchildren, the second rheumatism, the deathbed, the reading of the will-once in a thousand times it’s interesting"(699). Here the Stage Manager gives insight into George and Emily’s future. He is hinting at their life and fate to come. Goin’ to be a great engineer, Joe.
Our Town by Thornton Wilder begins May 7, 1901 in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. In the first Act, Wilder shows the daily life of the town’s people, starting with the characters morning routine. During this portion of the play, Wilder introduces all of the main characters. The characters mainly consist of the Gibbs and Webb families. He then goes on to narrate the daily activities of the characters, more specifically Mrs. Gibbs and Mrs. Webb. During the first Act, Wilder makes a relationship between George Gibbs and Emily Webb known. Which leads into the second Act of the play, “Love and Marriage.” Within Act II George and Emily get married. Wilder demonstrates the typical nerves that every couple gets on their wedding day. Soon the conflict is resolved and the wedding ceremony commences. The second Act ends with George and Emily coming down the aisle, then Act III begins. Throughout the play there has been daily life, love and marriage, and now for the final act there is death. Many years have passed and there is
Theme is defined as the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person’s thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic. Throughout literary history, authors have been using theme to bring a story together and make a point. In order to make a story have a resounding feeling in readers, authors use themes to leave an underlying message which are usually lessons and morals that should be widely taught, such as in children’s books or in fables. In all three stories, “A Rose for Emily”, “Hills like White Elephants”, and “Harrison Bergeron” the author’s use a mutual theme of death and further show how death brings change to each of the main character’s lives in different
The theme of Our Town is that people do not truly appreciate the little things in daily life. This theme is displayed throughout the entire play. It starts in the beginning with everybody just going through their daily life, occasionally just brushing stuff off or entirely not doing or appreciating most things. But as you progress through the story you begin to notice and squander on the thought that the people in the play do not care enough about what is truly important. By the end of this play you realize that almost everybody does not care enough for the little things as they should, instead they only worry about the future, incessantly worrying about things to come.
Have you ever stopped to realize life for what it truly means? Every day we go about our lives taking things for granted without even realizing the value in every moment we are given. Playwright Thornton Wilder portrays this message in the play Our Town and he does it using unorthodox theatrical approaches. By using the Stage Manager to break the “fourth-wall”, Wilder is able to have a stronger impact on those who are listening. Wilder also creates not only a seemingly boring town, but also extremely bland lives of flat characters. By doing this, he is able to emphasize events such as marriage, birth, and death with characters Emily Webb and George Gibbs. Through them, Wilder intentionally shows how beautiful life itself is, especially the seemingly insignificant moments. He uses the technique of manipulating time by rushing through each act as well as including
“She began to talk about all she had seen, just as if it had been a party…” All Emily worries about is whether or not “she said her piece properly”.
The theme of the play has to do with the way that life is an endless cycle. You're born, you have some happy times, you have some bad times, and then you die. As the years pass by, everything seems to change. But all in all there is little change. The sun always rises in the early morning, and sets in the evening. The seasons always rotate like they always have. The birds are always chirping. And there is always somebody that has life a little bit worse than your own.
Thornton wanted people to learn though everything he wrote ("Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975)" 12). A good example of his love to teach in plays, would be the play Our Town, in which he writes his "love letter to humanity" (Radavich 5). Thornton wanted people who see Our Town to know "There is something way down deep that's eternal about every human being" ("Wilder, Thornton (1897-1975)" 8). He was very good at capturing this in his show, especially in the dialogue of the Stage Manager who often points out many things about life.