Exploring the Theme of Transience of Human Life in Our Town
The play Our Town by Thornton Wilder deals with many ideas and themes throughout. One of the most common, well supported and most interesting of these ideas being The Transience of Human Life. This theme is throughout the play focused on 3 main ideas: people get too caught up in the moments of their life to reflect on themselves and their existence, people often forget that their time on earth is not endless and people live in ignorance and blindness. These ideas are expressed through: worded repetition, tragic foreshadowing and the brilliant use of a rhetorical question.
In the play Wilder explores the theme of The Transience of Human Life which manifests in the idea of being caught up so much in one’s own life that you begin to forget about your existence has a human being. This idea is best put in and excerpt from the Stage Manager’s Monologue at the beginning of act 3 “We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars ... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal … All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it.” This quote highlights how Wilder believes that people do not spend enough time focusing on themselves to fully grasp the concept of the word eternal and how they always know that something is eternal but can never figure out what exactly it is which is eternal and when someone does they others often forget that they themselves are not eternal. In order to push this idea Wilder employs repetition and purposefully repeats the word “eternal” throughout the quote just to make it apparent and obvious to the reader the meaning and impact of the word as it represents something which does not end and cannot end but you remain unaware of it.
In Our Town the theme of The Transience of Human Life is investigated and expanded upon which manifests on the idea of how many people become so caught up in daily life forget they their time on this planet is limited. This idea is best made obvious in act 1 when Mrs. Gibbs is talking about her dream to visit Paris she is asked why she has not perused with her husband so far this only for her to reply “there’ll always be time to convince him later”. This quote perfectly embodies Wilder’s belief that people get so caught up in daily life that they forget that they will not be around forever. This quote is dripping with tragedy and foreshadowing as it foreshadows that Mrs. Gibbs will never make it Paris but will instead perish before this goal is met. This foreshadowing is revealed to be exactly right as 12 years after Act 1 she is revealed to have died and the funds she had saved were spent on a cattle trough. This tragic because she could’ve gone to Paris in her lifetime but she forgot that her life was not infinite and held back and back until she died never making it to Paris in within her limited time on earth.
Throughout the play Wilder discusses the theme of the Transience of Human life in a nuanced way manifesting the last idea to be covered in this essay is the unintentional ignorance and blissfulness of those who still have time left on planet earth. This idea comes to a head and is portrayed in some of the very last lines of the play. As Emily and other spirits watch George becoming overcome with grief on Emily’s grave many spirits commentate saying that “such and act of grief is a waste of time” Emily (who now understands human impermanence) asks Mrs. Gibbs while watching her Husband “They don’t understand do they?”. This ending rhetorical question being both a product of her care for George and Wilder’s desire to make the audience think about the play and their lives as they leave the theatre. This rhetorical question is one which makes the audience think about how they value their own life and how they live it with the main theme of the play wanting to get people to do stuff as soon as they have to opportunity and to not waste you limited time on this earth by living with the false belief of immortality.
Conclusion
To conclude and summarize the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder is a play with theming relating to the Transience of Human Life with many central motifs this central idea in the play being backed up by many points and examples throughout the play all contributing to leaving the reader and audience with a questions to ponder and to reconsider their future, past and present and life decisions while keeping the ticking clock of eternal time in mind.
