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Passage of Time

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Submitted By ley0616
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Running head: PASSAGE

Passage of Time
Alyssa Smith
Grand Canyon University

Passage of Time
Life is never guaranteed. A person does not know when their end will come. People go through day to day life and rarely stop to look around them. It seems that the older a person gets the faster time appears to go by. This is not an uncommon theory. The play “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder (1938) is a representation of people versus time. The theme is to appreciate the moments in life because time passes quickly.
In three short acts, this play covers twelve years in the lives of the townspeople. There are many references that indicate passage of time as a theme. As the stage manger is introducing the town, he states “Naturally, out in the country – all around – there’ve been lights on for some time, what with milkin’s and so on. But towns people sleep late” (Wilder, 1938, pg. 7). The reference to people in town sleeping late compared to in the country is a way of saying that townspeople waste valuable time. Time sleeping is time that could be spent with family or friends enjoying moments that do not come along often.
When the town does awaken they are being rushed. The kids are in a hurry to get ready, they eat breakfast quickly, and then they run off to school so as not to be late. Everything is rushed. Life proceeds in a way that indicates it is something that needs to be done. When Emily is talking about doing her homework, she stated “Well, I always feel it’s something you have to go through” (pg. 28) and “I don’t mind it really. It passes the time” (pg. 28). These moments are not being created to enjoy they are being created simply to pass time.
In the final act Emily had the opportunity to go back and look upon a memory of when she was alive. She went to her twelfth birthday but did not stay long because she could not bear to watch how unappreciative the living was about their life. She stated, “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed” (pg. 100). Then she asked the stage manager, “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?” At this point she already knew the answer was no. One of the dead people then told Emily,
That’s what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those…of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. (pg. 101)
Unfortunately, people do not realize what they had until it is too late to appreciate it.
There are many symbols of time in the play such as a train, a watch, the stage manager, and gardens. The train symbolizes life constantly moving forward. A train never moves backwards, but rather straight forward toward a direct destination. The stage managers watch represented the same, always moving in a clockwise direction. He was always checking his watch and making comments about how much time had gone by. An example is when he stated, “Afraid we won’t have time for that, Professor” (pg. 21). The stage manager acted as a time keeper. He constantly reminded the reader that it was time to move on. The gardens of Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Gibb were another way used to show that time is passing. The growth of the flowers and vegetables represent the life cycle that never stops. It also represents a popular saying about taking time to stop and smell the roses. That is a way of saying that a person should slow down and appreciate the small things in life. In conclusion, the moral of this play it to remind people that time passes quickly and should not be taken for granted. Most people in this world have memories of their life and wish they could have made more. Passage of time is used merely as an excuse to not slow down. Life never stops so one should always appreciate every minute that passes.

Reference
Wilder, T. (1938). Our town. New York: Scholastic.

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