"our town" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)
The Stage Manager tells you that Act II will be Love and Marriage. It isn't much of a surprise to discover that George and Emily are the ones who will marry. The Stage Manager interrupts, as usual, this time to take you back to a scene from George and Emily's courtship and the Gibbs' reaction to George's plans. Then, after a few more philosophical observations, the Stage Manager takes you to the wedding, and everyone is happy.
Act III opens in the graveyard, and the Stage Manager tells you that nine years have passed. A new grave is being prepared, and you soon discover that Emily is the one who has died. She joins the dead already resting in the graveyard, including her mother-in-law, Mrs. Gibbs, but she is still restless. Despite all the warnings, she chooses to go back, to see her twelfth birthday. But it's too painful. She can't stand watching everyone pay so little attention to Life and flees back to her place among the dead. Night comes to Grover's Corners, and the Stage Manager wishes the audience a good night, too.
Wilder knew a great deal about the theater, both its literary history and its practical problems. He had a number of friends who were actors or directors, and he knew that part of any play would be created by them. Instead of viewing this as a drawback--actors distorting his work of art--he thought of it as an asset. The actors collaborated with the playwright in creating the finished performance.
A few years after Our Town, Wilder wrote:
Characterization in a play is like a blank check which the dramatist accords to the actor for him to fill in--not entirely blank, for a number of indications of individuality are already there, but to a far less definite and absolute degree than in the novel.... The dramatist's principal interest being the movement of the story, he is willing to resign the more detailed aspects of the characterization to the actor.
In Our Town, the actors have plenty of room for their own characterizations to fit in, because Wilder has created types rather than individuals. George, Emily, and all the people in Grover's Corners are never very distinctly individual. This means that when you read or see the play, you can keep saying to yourself, "Oh, yes. I know someone like that. He's just like so-and-so." More important, you can say to yourself, "I know what he's feeling. I've felt like that myself."
By keeping characterization at a minimum, Wilder also warns you that what is important here is ideas, not personalties; universals, not individuals.
^^^^^^^^^^OUR TOWN: THE STAGE MANAGER
The most important character in the play is the Stage Manager, who has no name and has only a minor role in the flow of the story. Yet he has by far the longest part in the play, the most speeches, and he is always on the stage.
He speaks in a folksy manner, just chatting with the audience, making homey observations and sounding very commonsensical. He may sound unsophisticated, but his ancestry as a character goes way back to the chorus in ancient Greek drama, and he has relatives in medieval and renaissance plays as well.
In ancient Greece, plays first appeared as part of religious festivals. They were very stylized and ritualistic. Important in each play was the chorus, generally a group of neutral observers who commented on the action and told the audience about events that happened offstage. The chorus frequently advised the audience how they were supposed to react to events on stage and reinforced the moral message of the play. Characters serving a similar function can also be found in the religious plays of the Middle Ages.
One of the major questions you will have to answer for yourself as you read this play is how much importance you should give to the Stage Manager. Is he a genial old codger, a sort of Spirit of Grover's Corners, giving you a somewhat sentimental picture of Life in small-town America? Is he the spokesman for the author's views? Is he speaking seriously about "the meaning of life"? Does he represent God? Wilder was a religious writer, though not dogmatic. In the play, the Stage Manager has the power to move time backward and forward, and he knows what is yet to be. Although he is always there, the living characters never seem to be aware of his existence.
^^^^^^^^^^OUR TOWN: EMILY WEBB
Emily is the daughter of the editor of the town newspaper. She marries George Gibbs and dies giving birth to their second child. She is the girl who grows up during the course of the play, both in age and understanding. In Act III she has the famous life-affirming speech, "Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you." At the end, speaking of the living, she says, "They don't understand much, do they?"
Emily's speeches at the end of the play are so obviously important that they suggest that you should have been paying special attention to her all through the play. And it's hard not to pay attention to her. From her first appearance she's so full of enthusiasm audiences find it impossible not to like her. And the very familiarity of her emotions make them all the more real. Was there ever an adolescent who could look at the moonlight unmoved? Is there anything strange about a girl who's jealous of a boy's love for sports? Did any bride ever approach her wedding without a last minute moment of panic?
When you first see Emily, she's a schoolgirl having breakfast and engaging in a bit of one-upmanship with her younger brother. She's proud of the fact that she does well in school and daydreams about being a great lady. But she can't keep it up too long with George, and her conversation with her mother shows that what she would really like is to be beautiful. Come evening, she tries to help George with his homework--it obviously isn't very helpful help--but what she really wants to do is dream in the moonlight. In short, she's a young girl growing up.
In Act II you see that she is a bit miffed with George, who has been ignoring her for baseball. But once she gets a hint that he loves her, she is perfectly willing to overlook his failings and rank him with such "perfect" men as her father and his. When it comes time for her wedding, she has a moment of panic, when being Daddy's Little Girl seems so much safer than being a grownup wife and mother. But the moment passes, and she does grow up.
In Act III, Emily undergoes the third step in her metamorphosis, moving from life to death. But is the change a loss or a gain? She always seemed particularly aware of the world around her, yet when she returns to her twelfth birthday, she is overwhelmed by all that she and those she loves ignored all the time.
^^^^^^^^^^OUR TOWN: GEORGE GIBBS
George, the son of Dr. Gibbs, is the boy next door who marries Emily. If she is a typical American girl, he is a typical American boy--or at least what many people think of as typical. He is nice and polite, though not too bright; loving, but not very good at expressing his emotions; and perfectly happy to stay down on the farm.
He goes through the same stages of growing up that Emily does, but he's always lagging a bit behind her in maturity as well as in math. While Emily is acting out the great lady, he's tossing a baseball, too shy to talk to her except by "accident." He wants to be a farmer when he grows up and can't imagine having any trouble doing the work on a farm, though he still has a bit of trouble getting around to chopping wood for his mother at home. And he isn't hypnotized by the moonlight until Emily points it out to him.
When it comes to courting Emily, he's more than a little tongue-tied (not an unusual state of mind for a young person in love). But Emily, who has no trouble telling George what's wrong with him, also has no trouble understanding what he means, even if he can't manage to actually say that he loves her.
In Act III George doesn't say a word, but he has his most powerful scene when he throws himself on Emily's grave. Once more, Emily has gone before him--she has died, and she also understands more than he does.
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |