Death as a Theme Our Town :: essays papers

In the play Our Town, the people of Grovers Corners mask their worries and thoughts about death in their quest for happiness. In the first act, a few deaths occur, and the carriage of the people towards these deaths is a negligent one of briefly acknowledging death and moving on. Also, the children in act two who atomic number 18 faced with adulthood are reluctant to accept the burden, through their hesitance to grow up and approach death. In the third act, when we finally get a clear picture of death, the reader sees that the people who are dead are regretful that their mundane lives were incomplete, not realizing the importance of life until they are dead. This method of live proves unfulfilling, as the dead arduously mourn their trivial lives yearning to have made a difference. The stage jitney directs the flow of the play throughout, and his transient attitude towards death reflects Grovers Corners overall outlook on a life that tries to mentally avoid death. This s tance is established primarily by the stage manager in his first act narrative, which hastily describes the fatalities, masking their importance and reality. Want to tell you something about that boy Joe Crowell there. Joe was awful bright graduated from high enlighten here, head of his class. So he got a scholarship to Massachusetts Tech. Graduated head of his class there, too. It was all wrote up in the Boston paper at the time. Goin to be a great engineer, Joe was. But the war broke out and he died in France. This brief account demonstrates the importance placed on a mans death. The people of Grovers Corners live in a world where change is frowned upon consequently, the means of dealing with such a great adaptation as death is to prevent themselves from thinking of it. In the stagnant society of Grovers corners, death is the ultimate obstacle, and ignorance is the remedy. Another instance where the stage manager subtly demonstrates this practice of evading notions of deat h is his intervention in scenes that broach the topic. Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they get int talk in English and dont even want to. The stage manager enters briskly from the right. He tips his hat to the ladies (P.