OUR TOWN July book club

Dear Shadow Mountain Ward Literary Society,

Our reading this month is the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder.
It explores the lives of people living in a small, quintessentially American town. It was first produced in 1938 and received the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. I have given out a dozen copies, but still have three copies at my house.

Reminder: We meet 7:00 pm Thursday, June 16th at Joan Iverson’s home, or actually, in her beautiful back yard, sitting in lawn chairs with our feet dangling lazily in her sparkling swimming pool with the scripts of Our Town in our laps..….

The play is divided into three aspects of the human experience:

ACT ONE: Daily Life
ACT TWO: Love / Marriage
ACT THREE: Death / Loss

What is Our Town is about? It is about everything. It is about common people living common lives doing common things, experiencing common emotions, and doing it with their family and friends around them. It is….about all of us. About the beauty of love and the temporary and nature of life. About our desire to understand more than we can see and to hold on to things that we must let go….

Here is a copy from a review I found that explains Emily’s emotions about reliving her 12th birthday… she’s allowed to leave the cemetery to ‘live it’, and, worse, ‘know what comes next that they can’t see’…..

Observing the funeral company, she says she never realized in life how troubled many people are. Nevertheless, she expresses a wish to return to life for a little while. Mrs. Gibbs says she can but advises her not to. So does Mrs. Soames. But Emily says she plans to return to a happy day, not a sad one. “Why should that be painful?” .......The stage manager answers, saying, “You not only live it; you watch yourself living it.” He also says she will see the future. Mrs. Gibbs points out another reason Emily should not return: The proper activity of the dead is to forget all about life and to think only of what is coming next and to prepare for it. Emily says she cannot forget–and so she returns to the day of her 12th birthday. First, she sees the routine of life going on as usual–Howie Newsome delivering milk, Constable Warren telling how he rescued a man lying in snowdrifts, Joe Crowell delivering newspapers. Then she sees her mother and father, who are surprisingly youthful to her. They are preparing to give her gifts. .......She speaks with her mother, who tells her to eat her breakfast slowly. Mrs. Webb gives her a dress which she had to “send all the way to Boston” to get. Her father and Wally also have gifts, but Emily can’t go on any longer and breaks down, saying she didn’t realize how much the little things of life–things she did not notice before–really matter. Emily returns to the cemetery and addresses Mrs. Gibbs: .......“They don’t understand, do they?” .......“No, dear. They don’t understand.”