Our Town

Today in our Play Reading class we read one of the most depressing non-Shakespeare plays that I've ever read.
That play was Our Town.
For the first two acts it was very dull, because Thornton Wilder wrote in the style of basically everyday life performed on a stage.
I liked the idea of it. Everyday life on the stage, but it could get a little dull, because there are no props, no backdrop or scenery, and since it was 1912 the costumes were very simply stylized. It was simple to the point where it got boring and shiny objects would catch my attention.
But during the Third act, which was very short, everything took another turn, every ones heads shot up.
Here's the outline of the third act:
Our main character Emily has died in child birth and is buried, she then takes her place among the towns dead. She becomes hysterical, and our omniscient narrator offers her the chance to go back to one day, the least important day she could think of. Despite the pleadings from her fellow dead, she returns to her hometown of Grover's Corners, where she walks into her house, seeing her mother making breakfast and her father ambling around the house, she is sadly elated, but her happiness is diminished when her mother won't look at her. Emily begins to cry as she screams at her mothers back to look at her.
She then asks the narrator to take her back to her grave, where she is consoled the dead. Her husband George enters the cemetery and lays down at Emily's grave. Emily looks at him, and turns to Georges mother, who had died the year before, and asks her; "Mother Gibbs, they don't understand do they?" Mother Gibbs replies; "No dear, they don't understand"
And that's how it ends.
I hated the play until the last act.
It was...it was just indescribable. The acting was brilliant, and the thinking behind that act was indescribable.
The idea that we DON'T understand. We don't understand death, and we understand very little of life.
We don't understand death in the way that we believe it to be a sad event, and that's it. In more emotional terms, death can only be fully understood by people who are dead, they go to the cemetery after they die to forget, and if you return you will only find sadness for what you had. Emily puts it this way after she returns from Grover's Corners:
Mother Gibbs: Were you happy?
Emily: No. i should have listened to you. That's all human beings are, just blind people.
There's also a line afterward spoken from the town Depressive; "That's the happy world you wanted to go back to, ignorance and blindness."
That's the world we live in. People going on the feelings of others. Walking on a cloud of ignorance, believing that we have a million years to go on until suddenly you're dead and you regret all your lost time.
What I find most intriguing is Emily's line to the narrator, which was; "Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?"
The Narrator replies; "No. The Saints and Poets maybe, they do some"
We don't realize what it is to live until we're on the outside looking in.
It was painful for me to watch Emily scream at her mother to look at her, when her mother couldn't hear her.
It opened my eyes to how very little we look at each other. And if there's any truth to the play, we're lost.
Because without looking at each other, there is no true being. We can't truly appreciate each other without it.
And that's what motivates Emily to ask Mother Gibbs; "They don't understand do they?"
Its a very powerful ending.
And no, I'm not depressed, I'm just putting the act in perspective and...Internet soul searching? Yeah, that's it.
And my 'Change the font' button has now broke.
Dammit.

Beatles: Not guilty for getting in your way while you're trying to steal the day. Not guilty and I'm not here for the rest, I'm not trying to steal your vest. I am not trying to be smart, I only want what I can get.