Thorton Wilder's Our Town

Thorton Wilder's Our Town
Begin: 10/12/07
End: 10/21/07
Quality: Ten out of Ten.
Reason: Reading Plan.
Genre: Fiction. African-American Fiction. Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1977.
Fog Index: N/A
Flesch Index: N/A
Flesch-Kincaid Index: N/A
Complex Words:N/A.
Number: A Few.
Synopsis: Well, it’s really quite a number of stories, now isn’t it. The main one is Milkman and his lack of identity but that doesn’t really do justice to the story, not by a long shot.
Thoughts:When I was initially reading it, I wasn’t that impressed. I have always heard really good things about this story and so I was a little surprised. After I finished however and got to thinking about it, I realized it was a lot more impressive than I first thought it was writing about love and life of us all. Very good!

“Well, I guess that don’t any harm, either. Whereever you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense….” (309)

“There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being….You know as well as I do that the dead don’t stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth…and the ambitions they had…and the pleasures they had…and the things they suffered…and the people they loved. They get weaned away from the earth-that’s the way I put it-weaned away.

And they stay here while the earth part of ‘em burns away, burns out: and all that time they slowly get indifferent to what’s goin’ on in Grover’s Corner.

They’re waitin’. They’re waitin’ for something that they feel is comin’. Something important, and great. Aren’t they waitin’ for the eternal part in them to come out clear?” (309)

“Live people don’t understand, do they?”
“No, dear-not very much.
“They’re sort of shut up in little boxes, aren’t they.” (311)

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?- every, every minute?
“No. {pause} The saints and poets, maybe- they do some.
I’m ready to go back.