"Cliff Notes - Our Town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Next comes George's moment of panic, his realization that life is passing. He doesn't want to grow old. But the moment passes and then it's Emily's turn. She also panics and wants to go back, wants to stay a little girl.

NOTE: GOING BACK There has been a lot of reminiscing on the part of the characters in this act. They have been looking back at the past and enjoying their memories. When Emily and George have their moments of panic here, they think of the past with fondness. You will see how different it will be in Act III when Emily does go back.

Seeing each other, both Emily and George recover and make their own promises before the ceremony--promising to care for each other, to love each other, to help each other. Why do you suppose these are the vows you hear, while Wilder has the traditional vows of the wedding service drowned out by Mrs. Soames' chatter?

NOTE: CREATING AN IMPACT Most plays begin by introducing characters, starting a sequence of events, and creating suspense about how the characters will fare. Suspense is not quite as important in Our Town. When you first see Emily and George, it seems clear they will marry. Suspense is created, however, by the fact that you know early in the play that someone will die in the last act, but you do not know who.

Instead of depending heavily on suspense, Wilder increases your emotional involvement. In Act I you watch the daily life of some people in a small town. It is pleasant. In Act II you participate in a courtship and a wedding. Your emotional involvement is heightened. Your involvement increases in the third, and final, act until the full impact of Wilder's ideas is revealed.

The actors all freeze in a tableau while the Stage Manager/Minister speaks of the pattern that marriage begins, a pattern that is repeated over and over again. Then the tableau is broken and the joyous bride and groom come down the aisle. Mrs. Soames has the final word--"The important thing is to be happy."

Do you think that Wilder agrees with Mrs. Soames? Or, since this is only one of the acts in the play, do you think he is saying that happiness is only one of the things that happens to people, not necessarily the most important? Are most of the people in the play happy or unhappy? Are they too busy to know? What do you think?

^^^^^^^^^^OUR TOWN: ACT III

During the intermission the audience sees the stagehands rearrange the set. Three rows of folding chairs are put on the right side of the stage, facing the audience. These represent graves in the cemetery.

NOTE: THE POPULARITY OF OUR TOWN One of the reasons Our Town continues to be so popular with amateur groups is the ease with which it can be produced. There is very little expense involved. No elaborate sets or costumes are needed. And the simplicity of the empty stage, with the chairs being used to fill a variety of functions, is a striking visual metaphor about life.

But the ease of production is not the only reason for the play's popularity. Our Town shows us ourselves as we would like to believe we live. Life appears simple and pure. Almost everyone is good-natured and reasonably happy. Simon Stimson is the only character who has a terrible problem, and you never get to know him.

People like to believe that the picture Our Town represents is the way life is or can be. By setting the play in the relatively recent past, Wilder touched upon a common human feeling of nostalgia. The past frequently seems better than the present. Where were you even five years ago? Were you happier, younger, with fewer problems, with larger dreams for the future? The combination--life as we would like it to be, set in a simpler (and better) time than our own--has enormous appeal.

If Wilder had shown too much of Stimson's tale, you would be distracted from a story about George and Emily's innocence.

If Wilder had set the story further in the past, you might have difficulty relating to the lives of the characters. But everyone has walked home from school with friends--or thinks that's the way life should be. Wilder is showing us a picture of ourselves that we like to see. Audiences want to think the play represents the essence of life.

As the intermission ends, some of the actors enter and sit in the chairs. Mrs. Gibbs and Simon Stimson sit in the front row. A seat at the end remains empty. In the second row is Mrs. Soames. Wally Webb is in the third row.

NOTE: According to Wilder's stage directions, the dead "do not turn their heads or their eyes to right or left, but they sit in a quiet without stiffness. When they speak their tone is matter-of-fact, without sentimentality." Wilder wants the audience to notice that the dead have lost their emotional attachment to the living. Later, you will understand that even this becomes a comment on what it means to be alive.

The Stage Manager takes up his usual position, and when the house lights go down he begins to speak. Nine years have gone by this time. And this is a different part of Grover's Corners, "an important part," on a hilltop. He talks about the beauty of the setting and points out the oldest graves, belonging to the "strong-minded" settlers. Genealogists, paid by people who want to be certain they have colonial ancestors, visit the graves. "Wherever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense," he says. Then he points out the Civil War veterans. "New Hampshire boys... had a notion that the Union ought to be kept together, though they'd never seen more than fifty miles of it themselves.... And they went and died about it."

Wilder is pointing out that humans are both silly and noble. There is no such thing as "either/or" when it comes to understanding the human race. It contains all possibilities.

Finally, the Stage Manager points to the actors sitting on chairs. Mrs. Gibbs, who worried so about her husband, is dead. So are Simon Stimson, Mrs. Soames, and Wally Webb.

NOTE: At the beginning of the play, the Stage Manager mentioned the deaths of several characters, including Mrs. Gibbs. It wasn't upsetting because you hadn't met them yet. And he didn't talk about every character's death. Now, learning about the death of Mrs. Gibbs and of Wally causes a pang. You've met them. They aren't just names any more. Why do you think Wilder has done this? You may recall the question, "How's it going to end?" Wilder wants you to realize that most people go through life asking such questions when they know the answer perfectly well. Everyone is going to die. Yet everyone acts as if death is unexpected.

Wilder uses the Stage Manager to state some other beliefs. "We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names.... That something has to do with human beings." There is, he says, something within each one of us that lives on beyond our own life force. is he talking about the soul? The Stage Manager says that all the great thinkers throughout history have been saying it, but people have trouble remembering the idea. "We all know," says the Stage Manager. Is he right? Do we all know? Does Wilder think we all know?

NOTE: Wilder has been accused of being too much like a teacher, hitting you over the head with his message. Do you think this is a valid criticism? Or is the sugarcoating of humor and emotion thick enough to make the message go down easily? Or is Wilder raising questions rather than insisting on certain answers?

In one of the most lyrical passages in the play, the Stage Manager describes how the "earth part" of people is burned away after death and the "eternal part" comes out. The part that attaches people to the earth, memory and personal identity, has to disappear. (This is why the actors in the chairs speak and behave passively. The earth part of them is burning out.) It is not that the dead cease to care about the living; they hardly remember what it was to be alive. Do you suppose that this is the perfection that people talked about earlier in the play?

Now the living appear. One is Joe Stoddard, the undertaker, and the other is Sam Craig, a local boy who moved out west--to Buffalo (a comic reminder of how small a small town can be).

Like the first two acts, this one begins in the morning. But there is no train whistle, no milkman, no newspaper boy. And the exchange of news this time is about the dead. As Sam looks at the graves, Joe fills him in on what has happened. Today's funeral is for Sam's cousin, a young person. You don't know right away who it is. When Joe says that she died in childbirth, you suspect that it was Emily, though you can't be completely sure until Mrs. Gibbs tells you.