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Stage Manager's Opening Speech In 'Our Town'

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Stage Manager's Opening Speech In 'Our Town'
Our Town Act 3

How does the Stage Manager, in his opening speech, again remind us that earthly life is made up of recurring cycles and of eternal change?

It reinstates to the readers the notion of repeated culture of the town, and the small changes that come within time. The stage manger talks about the scenery, and the repititive nature of it within the town. And how when a member of the town dies, they are traditionally placed on the hilltop, mourned, then left to rest.

2. In the Stage Manager’s opening monologue, he states, “And genealogists come up from Boston—get paid by city people for looking up their ancestors. They want to make sure they’re Daughters of the American Revolution and of the Mayflower…Well, I guess that don’t
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According to Mrs. Gibbs, why wouldn’t this be wise? Explain what Emily discovers when she relives her twelfth birthday and sees daily life from the perspective of eternity.

Mrs. Gibbs says that their life now is to forget the time they were alive and to think of whats ahead. When Emily was reliving her twelfth birthday, against the dead souls wishes, she sees that the living go through life without savoring their time on earth, that they take their life for granted.

We’ve heard the hymn “Blessed Be the Tie That Binds” earlier in the play. When? What is the tie that binds, and what do you think the song has to do with the playwright’s themes?

It symbolizes that death is a unchanging part of human life and will come eventually to everybody.

When Emily realizes (550) that it is the living who are shut up in little boxes, we feel some irony—a sense that this is just the opposite of what we would have thought was true. Why is this statement ironic? How is it also true?

It is ironic because she is in a box herself, she was placed inside a coffin. The statement is also true because the living doesn't savor their life when they still have it, and confine themselves to a certain

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