Student Question
What does the "American Dream" consist of according to the play Our Town?
Quick answer:
In "Our Town," the American Dream centers on small-town life, stability, and appreciating mundane moments. It celebrates Grover's Corners as a place of community, where everyone knows each other, and life is simple yet meaningful. The play contrasts with other American literature by emphasizing ordinary life and community roots over ambition or wealth. Wilder's vision reflects a dream of independence and belonging, akin to the aspirations in Of Mice and Men.
In Our Town, the American Dream is achieved through small-town normalcy, ordinary stability, and savoring the small moments in life. As Mrs. Gibbs says,
. . . choose an unimportant day. Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.
Our Town is a celebration of small-town normalcy in Grover's Corners, in a white America settled by pilgrims. It is a hymn to places where dogs can sleep all day in the street undisturbed and everyone knows everyone else.
Soldiers from different wars are buried in the cemetery in Grover's Corners. We learn, too, that the American Dream was actualized by Union soldiers who went to fight in the Civil War because it was self-evident that holding the United States together was the right thing to do:
All they knew was the name, friends—the United States of America. The United States of America. And they went and died about it.
Wilder's vision of the American Dream in this play is different from the dreams exemplified in other works of American literature. It is not a dream of remaking the world afresh in your image or of finding a source of easy wealth. It is most similar to the simple dream that the characters in Of Mice and Men long for: a house, an ordinary life, some independence, and some roots in a community.
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