Our Town

The final act jumps ahead nine years to summer 1913. Chairs are placed on the stage to represent gravestones, and Mrs Gibbs, Simon Stimson, Mrs Soames, and Wally Webb, Mr Webb’s son, sit down in them, indicating that they are now dead. The cemetery sits atop a sunny hill with a beautiful view. The dead sit motionless and speak in a “matter-of-fact” tone, “without sentimentality and, above all, without lugubriousness” (85). Also among the graves are some original settlers and Civil War veterans. The Stage Manager explains that the town remains very much the same, not including the slow replacement of horses by cars and the recent fear of burglars resulting in locked doors. The town has experienced grief at the recent deaths, but the Stage Manager has comforting words for the audience: “There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being” (88). He describes death as a process of weaning away from earth and losing one’s attachments to suffering, ambitions, pleasure, and people. This is why the dead are depicted as motionless and matter of fact: they are still moderately connected to earth but lack the emotional connection to it they once had.

Two actors enter the scene: Sam Craig, Mrs Gibbs’s nephew who has returned from an extended stay out west after finding out that his cousin Emily has died, and Joe Stoddard, the undertaker who works at the cemetery. Joe is surprised to see Sam much older and wiser, and Sam is disheartened to think about everyone who has died. His parents are in their graves as well. Joe reveals that Simon hung himself, and music notes are seen on his gravestone. Emily died during her second childbirth. Doc Gibbs, the Webbs, and George enter with an invisible casket.

The dead begin gossiping with one another about Emily and her death. They seem indifferent and slightly amused by the duality of life and death, although Mrs Soames has a lighter opinion of life than Mrs Gibbs. The living family members begin singing Emily’s favorite hymn as Emily enters the stage dressed in white and hair in ribbons “like a little girl” (94), showing her return to a pure state. She seems confused and dazed as she takes her seat among the dead and says, “hello.” She watches the funeral procession nervously and distracts herself with simple conversation with Mrs Gibbs. As the funeral ends, Doc Gibbs steps up to Mrs Gibbs’s grave, looking down at her directly. Mrs Gibbs does not meet his gaze, but Emily stares up at him. She cannot yet separate herself from the living and struggles to understand. She asks Mrs Gibbs and the Stage Manager if she can relive her life through memory, and Mrs Gibbs warns her against it. Mrs Gibbs explains that in the world of the dead, life is past, and there is only the future. She pleads with the Stage Manager to bring her back to a happy day in her life, and she chooses her twelfth birthday. The stage is set for a crisp and bright winter day, and Emily becomes elated watching her memory of Grover’s Corners unfold. It is a day much like any other, with Howie delivering the milk and neighbors making small talk about the weather.

Emily looks to the Stage Manager for permission to enter the scene, and he obliges. She enters as herself at age twelve and greets her mother before directly addressing the situation: “Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I’m dead. You’re a grandmother, Mama” (107). She is happy to be together with her family, including Wally who has also died, even if for just a moment, and begs her mother to look at her. Emily then becomes panicked at how quickly the moment is passing and begins to sob. She realizes she must refrain from reliving memories again as the pain is too much and gives Grover’s Corners and life itself a final goodbye. She understands the beauty of life in a way she never did previously. She asks the Stage Manager if anyone “ever realize[s] life while they live it” (108), to which he replies no, with the exception perhaps of poets and saints. Simon Stimson chimes in cynically, stating that people move through life “in a cloud of ignorance” (109) without regard for others or their limited time.

George returns to Emily’s grave moments later and falls at her feet in despair. The Stage Manager draws a dark curtain across the stage before his final words. He muses on the journey stars take across space to reach earth and the possible lack of life in space. He describes the earth as a planet “straining away all the time to make something of itself” (111), to the point where the entire planet needs to rest every day. He checks his watch—“Eleven o’clock in Grover’s Corners” (112)—and wishes the audience a good rest and a good night. The play ends.