Our Town by Thornton Wilder overviews the small details of Grover’s Corners, following the daily life of the Gibb’s and Webb’s family, specifically the teenagers George and Emily. Midnight in Paris is similar to Our Town because it follows Gil, the main character, through his time-travel experience back to the 1920’s, the era he claims as golden. The characters Emily and Gil both travel back to a desired time, albeit one is on purpose and the other accidental, and learn the lesson of appreciating the life around them. Emily purposefully decides to travel to the past in her afterlife, to revisit her twelfth birthday. Since she is dead, she is able to view everything in a third person point-of-view. This helps her learns to appreciate the small details in life, the moments which living people usually oversee and regard to as boring or plain. She realizes how important life is, and to savor every moment when she says she misses, “food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up.” She misses these because when dead, these actions and chores do not exist anymore. Although she learns this lesson, she can not use it to change the way she is living her life because she is already dead. Wilder purposefully does this to, teach the readers how important living in the present is, and to regard life as something wonderful and satisfying. Midnight in Paris teaches the same lesson as Our Town through the character Gil, who travels back to …show more content…
This is done through the time traveling experiences of Gil and Emily, who learn that life is not meant to be lived looking forward to the future or wishing for the past, but instead in the present. Gil’s experience and lesson mainly affect him, while moving the audience a little bit. Contrastingly, Emily’s lesson is meant to teach the audience that appreciating the small details in life is