How Do We Realize Life While We Live In Our Town

Do we ever realize life while we live it? In Our Town this question is touched upon the entirety of the play. With the death of Emily Gibbs, she wishes to go back and live in the realm of the living again. She only realizes it is depressing to find out that she never fully appreciated certain moments that she could not have valued properly without the knowledge she has after death. “They’re sort of shut up in little boxes, aren’t they?” (Wilder 89). Emily implies here that they are trapped, not able to fully understand what one is able to after death. Grasping the concept while living that every moment could potentially be very important to you in the future. “Time becomes a surface upon which that life has been painted,
Not all the pieces to life are there until after it is done, where then you can look upon all the details. It dampens her desire to go back and “live” with knowing that what she thought was an inconsequential moment will never be able to be fully appreciated in its true importance. The same applies to the humans that are currently living. It is impossible to know what moments you truly want to cherish without knowing what happens after the fact, meaning we do not and cannot live life while we live it. “No curtain. No scenery. The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light” (Wilder 5). In Our
Town, there is a lack of scenery and a set, something one would normally see in a vast majority of other plays. This play is based around the actions of the actors and actresses, implying unimportance to the presence of props and indicating the importance of the actions throughout this play. A first look into this play shows nothing particularly special about it other than one would have no choice but to pay more attention to the actions in the play other than items which could have potentially distracted the audience from the meaning. This could have been a further point made that material items