“Do any humans beings ever realize life while they live it? —every, every minute”: Tragedy in Our Town Despite the uplifting tone of Our Town, by Thornton Wilder, he suggests that individuals never truly appreciate life. In Our Town, it manifests a tragic vision of life and can be classified as one of the major genres of modern drama, a tragedy. In the tragedy, it implies that there is a symbol of death that is foreshadowed from the beginning. This captures how Our Town is a classical tragedy that belongs to the non-realism phase of drama. However, Our Town has characters and settings that were written realistically. When analyzing the tragedy, the Aristotelian theory applies in many ways because of the universal message that resonates
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Tragic heroes gain some type of wisdom or after roughly suffering. Many characters have died by Act Three and they tell Emily how the living doesn’t realize the meaning of life. Emily has an anagnorisis once she has comes back from her visual nostalgia, “ I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never notices. Take me back—up the hill—to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look (108).” Emily realizes the true meaning of life and the tragic vision for the living souls. As she reminisces for her life to live again she understands that she will miss the simple thing in life. The simple things in life are what the living souls forget to stop and reflect about, “Do any humans beings ever realize life while they live it? —every, every minute (108)?” Emily finally realizes how reminiscing about her past life will not bring her happiness. Without her coming to a tragic vision of life she could not be considered the tragic hero, “… That’s all human beings are! Just blind people (109).” Emily’s epiphany allows her to know the difference between the living souls and the dead souls. The living souls lack the freedom of living freely and happily verses the dead souls. The dead souls are far more aware of the importance of life and are not ignorant towards it. Emily understand the true meaning of life and living, “ Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you …show more content…
Gibbs: That’s not the only reason why you shouldn’t do it, Emily. When you’ve been here longer you’ll see that our life here is to forget all that, and think only of what’s ahead, and be ready for what’s ahead. When you’ve been here longer you’ll understand (99).”
For Emily, her catharsis was to go to her past and to try and relive her childhood. Once she gets to experience her cathartic moment it is like torture. She doesn’t completely understand that reliving the past isn’t a good idea. After realizing that her sympathizing for the living is no longer good, Emily says goodbye to all universal things. Ultimately, Wilder leaves the audience with the tragic vision of life message. He allows it not to be too late for the audience to realize life more and appreciate each other. It is about the importance of the simplicity of life and what is in your world. Our Town, carries out the tragic vision of life because it shows how a person can love, marry, and die without understanding the importance of it all. This represents this classical tragedy to still have the essence of modernity and be realistically
Tragic heroes gain some type of wisdom or after roughly suffering. Many characters have died by Act Three and they tell Emily how the living doesn’t realize the meaning of life. Emily has an anagnorisis once she has comes back from her visual nostalgia, “ I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never notices. Take me back—up the hill—to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look (108).” Emily realizes the true meaning of life and the tragic vision for the living souls. As she reminisces for her life to live again she understands that she will miss the simple thing in life. The simple things in life are what the living souls forget to stop and reflect about, “Do any humans beings ever realize life while they live it? —every, every minute (108)?” Emily finally realizes how reminiscing about her past life will not bring her happiness. Without her coming to a tragic vision of life she could not be considered the tragic hero, “… That’s all human beings are! Just blind people (109).” Emily’s epiphany allows her to know the difference between the living souls and the dead souls. The living souls lack the freedom of living freely and happily verses the dead souls. The dead souls are far more aware of the importance of life and are not ignorant towards it. Emily understand the true meaning of life and living, “ Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you …show more content…
Gibbs: That’s not the only reason why you shouldn’t do it, Emily. When you’ve been here longer you’ll see that our life here is to forget all that, and think only of what’s ahead, and be ready for what’s ahead. When you’ve been here longer you’ll understand (99).”
For Emily, her catharsis was to go to her past and to try and relive her childhood. Once she gets to experience her cathartic moment it is like torture. She doesn’t completely understand that reliving the past isn’t a good idea. After realizing that her sympathizing for the living is no longer good, Emily says goodbye to all universal things. Ultimately, Wilder leaves the audience with the tragic vision of life message. He allows it not to be too late for the audience to realize life more and appreciate each other. It is about the importance of the simplicity of life and what is in your world. Our Town, carries out the tragic vision of life because it shows how a person can love, marry, and die without understanding the importance of it all. This represents this classical tragedy to still have the essence of modernity and be realistically