The Skin of Our Teeth
Skin of Our Teeth, The,comedy by Thornton Wilder, produced and published in 1942, winning a Pulitzer Prize. The unconventional use of theatrical devices, such as asides and interruptions, increases the audience's feeling of participation.
George Antrobus, his wife, and his son and daughter represent humanity—the parents are Adam and Eve, and their son Henry is Cain—engaged in the struggle to survive. Their home in Excelsior, N.J., is threatened first by a creeping wall of ice, and later by a long war. Each time they barely escape annihilation, but George, inventor of the alphabet and the wheel, maintains the continuity of learning and culture. Lily Sabina, their maid, the eternal Lilith, nearly succeeds in winning George away from his wife on the Atlantic City boardwalk during a convention of which George is elected president. Constructive attitudes prevail after the war, in which Henry is the enemy. Having reassembled his family, George...
[The entire page is 185 words long]
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