Our Town Themes

Thornton Wilder created the theme, “appreciate the small things in life, there’s more of those than bigger moments,” when writing his screenplay, Our Town. Wilder portrays this theme in all three acts and also through his characters. This play starts in Act one with a normal day of the characters and Act two incorporates a few big days of these characters lives. Act three is more set aside, it shows that the little things mean just as much as the big things in life. The theme was not quite developed in Act one yet due to the example of the small things that happen in someone’s daily life. Just a simple conversation is started between George Gibbs and Emily Webb on schoolwork when walking home from school one evening. George states, “From my window up there I can just see your head nights when you’re doing your homework over in your room.”(Page 28) George was complimenting Emily on her dedication to her schoolwork and then she states, “Well, I always feel it’s something you have to go through.”(Page 29) Emily believes everyone has to go through some things in their life to help create them or change them and for her,

“I can go back there and live all those days over again.” This is a big part of the screenplay because it ties the theme to the entire plot. When she travels back to her twelfth birthday, she discovers how everyone around her is rushing through life and not stopping to look at one another. “I can't bear it. They're so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I'm here. I'm grown up. I love you all, everything. I can't look at everything hard enough.” Emily has a hard time with moving on but when she went back and noticed everything that was happening around her. She begins to wish that she held onto every moment of her life because of how quick everything