Discussion Topic
Emily's emotional response to reliving her 12th birthday after dying in Our Town
Summary:
In Our Town, Emily's emotional response to reliving her 12th birthday after dying is one of deep sadness and regret. She is overwhelmed by the realization of how little people appreciate the simple, everyday moments of life while they are living them.
Why does reliving her 12th birthday in Act III upset Emily in Our Town?
Emily Webb, who dies in childbirth, is only a teenager herself when she passes away. Despite the other deceased characters' advice, she decides to revisit one day in her small-town life.
On her twelfth birthday, Emily observes the town before the recent changes: there are many horses and no cars. She recognizes people she knew, such as Constable Warren, whom she knows has since passed away. The constable speaks with her father, just returned from a city visit, about once having saved a man who might have frozen outside in the winter, but he downplays Mr. Webb's suggestion that it was heroic.
Emily's parents' age makes an impression. She remarks on their youthful appearance. She sees her mother in the kitchen of their home and chats with her over breakfast. Her efforts to speak about events since that day are futile.
Emily finds the whole experience unbearable and goes back...
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to the afterlife setting. Realizing how much daily life occupies people, Emily is saddened by the waste of precious time. She asks rhetorically, "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?"
Before taking her place among the dead for eternity, Emily is allowed to "relive" the happiest day of her ife. She chooses her twelfth birthday. First, she sees people going about the business of the day, and then her family has gifts for her. She notices how young her parents look to her now.
The fact that people rush around in their busy lives without really seeing each other or paying attention to each is distressing to Emily. She wants to take it all in, savor each moment and each word spoken, but ordinary life goes by too quickly. She realizes that it's the little things of life, the things people take for granted--a smile, a hug, a comforting word, a little attention--that really matter.
How does Emily feel when she relives her 12th birthday after dying in Our Town?
This is one of the most interesting episodes in the play because Emily is like a ghost revisiting her own home and cannot be seen by her mother or father, although she is visible to the audience. She expected her visit to be an enjoyable one, but she quickly becomes saddened and wants to be taken back to the cemetery. What troubles her, she says, is that the living can't understand how miraculous it is to be alive and to go through the ordinary experiences of daily life. There is more to it than this, more which Emily probably doesn't understand at the time but will understand later. Thornton Wilder is dramatizing his religious thesis that existence is a continuous progression toward enlightenment and a higher state of being. You can't go backward, only forward. Death is only a higher state on the way to immortality. All the dead people at the cemetery warned Emily not to go back in time, but she was still too attached to life to listen. She had to find out for herself.