Posted by Tim Plodinec
Note: I wrote the following essay for school, following a reading of Thornton Wilder’s famous play “Our Town.” You can find an overview of the play here.
“Our Town” is a play written with the average Joe or Sally in mind. It resonates deeply with the small townfolk, of which there are less and less as the years go by. Young people are moving to the trendy, technologically-advanced urban centers in search of money-making ways to expound their creative efforts digitally and otherwise. Thus, how we view “Our Town” is changing.
“Our Town” has a pleasant ring to it. It’s like when you hear the national anthem while watching the American flag blow in the breeze. It’s like watching the sun go down over your own property for the 3,000th time. It’s like watching your fifth child run outside. It’s like looking down at the dishes you’re about to wash and observing a little bit of leftover brownie crust in the bottom. It’s quaint. It’s pure. It’s life. It’s a gift from God.
Wilder’s play is so wildly successful because we can all relate. People watch it, and mothers break into tears. Fathers sit frowning because they have never really liked earthly life all that much (understandable; their toil in life is a result of their sin against God). Sons scoff because they’re fools who aren’t trying to understand life and people better so they can learn to serve them better, and daughters are lost in the second act and frightened at the third. It’s a highly emotional play, except to the arrogant, on whom it’s beauty is all but lost. Some of these are similar characteristics to the Bible. You have to be “into it” to understand where you can enjoy it.
“Our Town” reflects the lives of two average families. Each have two children, likely the recommended number by Communists at the time (now the recommended number is one; or none, if you have any kind of medical record). Each family has a mother who cooks. I should pause at this point to notice that these are average New England families for the time and place in which they lived. And Wilder’s purpose was not to try to show more than that. He wanted us farther along time’s road to look back and enjoy seeing what it was like for our great-great-great grandparents, and he wanted us to learn to enjoy life. Anyway, each family (the Gibbs’ and the Webbs) are non-Christians and moralistic. They’re under God’s law of sin and death and condemned, and trying to live in such a way as to be “kind of good enough” for heaven. Of course they’re all “christians.” Nobody in the play actually goes to heaven; though instead of purgatory they remain in their graves, connected to their bodies, apparently awaiting the great White Throne judgment, at which they will be unpleasantly surprised (they think they are preparing for that judgment in their graves, although they do not define it).
As far as exemplification goes, “Our Town” depicts a lifestyle of bitter equality. Joe Crowell, Jr. was a nice guy who’s education got wasted when he died in the war. Pity. George Gibbs could have made it big time as a pitcher, traveling around, frequenting bars and ballparks; but he stays home and gets married and everybody pats him on the back. Emily sees the best looking ballplayer and marries him, and dies having her second child. It all looks like the average, depraved life. It’s kind of depressing.
God speaks to Israel, saying “I would that you were hot or cold, but since you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth.” At least if they are “cold” (sinning openly in their depraved arrogant slum of life) they may see God and turn and repent in dirt and ashes and turn to him, and if they are “hot” they are serving God with alacrity out of their satisfaction and joy in him, which leads to God’s glory and more joy and love in them. The characters in “Our Town” are complacent. They like life well enough, and don’t see a need for any kind of change. Understandable. People hate change, especially any kind of serious change, so they like to make a big deal out of all the little changes so people won’t think to try to impose any others on them. I speak from personal experience (literally) to my shame.
So, people come to “Our Town.” Some leave quickly (the young men, except those with girlfriends. Those with girlfriends sit and smile and laugh and are generally stupid). Some (the girls) soak it in, but not seriously (that wouldn’t be cool). The women allow themselves to cry, especially at the parts when the dead in Act III speak of how little the living strive to enjoy life and each other. This is quite a good ideal to pursue, actually, and another play (or movie) of similar theme set in a modern world, and of a similar quality could produce a healthy desire for life. However, this would quickly be misdirected into further death and decay, or rapidly extinguished, if it were not for satisfaction in real life in God, or preservation by God’s grace to that end.
As it is written, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the impure, nothing is pure.” One of my friends has a quote which reads, “If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll only make you stronger.” The problem is, not everything kills you instantly. It’s more like poison. A man doesn’t just go and commit adultery. Any adulterer will testify. A man doesn’t just murder. No. However, as the saying goes, “But you were thinking it!” Jesus said if you think it, you’ve done it. Sin breeds and brews death, and death begins when you do. So, perhaps it will make you stronger if it doesn’t kill you. But everything assists in your death if you are not pure, and you can only be pure if you stand in God’s righteousness, given to you by grace through faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. (Here I am speaking of eternal, spiritual life; not physical life.)
As the play does not include God’s message, but rather simply a straightforward message about the average life a hundred years ago, it can be pure and it can be impure. And God, by his grace, can employ it in his designs for salvation, sanctification and glorification. However, I would not say that the play “Our Town” reflects a biblical view of life; or a “biblical worldview.” People can watch it and be comforted, and people can watch it and be troubled. And people can pretend to watch it while keeping an eye on the person sitting next to them, and be indifferent. Whatever happens, we cannot reason how God might employ the play. He knows. But we can say that there is certainly not a good deal of evidence to suggest that a biblical worldview is effectively presented in it’s themes.
