While many moments of our life seem boring and ordinary, Emily shows us how unique these moments really are. We can never truly be happy until we can learn to simply enjoy life. Wilder is showing us that we, like Emily, spend our lives focused on objects instead of experiences. 88) Emily still thinks that money and possessions make life good. Gibbs about their new drinking fountain, and tells her “We bought that out of the money you left us,” to which Mrs. She is happy to be there, but she is still thinking like a living person. Emily enters the afterlife at her funeral and sits down in a chair next to Mrs. The act starts with the funeral of Emily, however, the focus of the act is not on her funeral but her experience in the afterlife. Act III begins to wrap up Wilder’s lessons by clearly showing us that we do not fully appreciate life. The compression of time shows us the importance of time and how each unique moment should be appreciated rather than rushing towards a point in the future. Although many people live their life aiming at a point in the future, once that moment arrives their life will still be basically the same, and the time spent waiting is time lost and unappreciated. By living a simple life and not taking notice to his surroundings, we can simply remove years of his life from the story without changing it. We do not know anything about what happened between now and when he died, but we can assume that most of his life was the same as it had always been. Wilder is trying to teach us the way that we should live our lives. Had Doc Gibbs known he would die in 1930, he would have lived life differently, appreciating every moment and spending time with his family. 8) By already knowing about his death, we view his actions in the play differently. Gibbs died first-long time ago, in fact” (p. Immediately after introducing them, he states “Doc Gibbs died in 1930. Early in the play, the Stage Manager introduces Doc Gibbs and his wife. This transition between big and small events shows us that small moments in life are just as important as big ones. Most people would consider that a big event in the world would deal with much larger issues than a local teacher getting married, but in the eyes of Joe, this is very big news. This statement shows that our perception of big and little events is relative. My school teacher, Miss Foster’s getting married to a fella over in Concord”(p. Gibbs asks him if anything serious is going on in the world, to which Joe replied “Yes Sir. While many see this as boring and lacking plot, it is meant to represent the actions we take every day that becomes part of our routine and begin to lose meaning. Gibbs stopping to talk to Joe the paperboy. At the beginning of the play, we are taken to a simple and insignificant moment in Grover’s Corners, Dr.

Our Town by Thornton Wilder