Our Town by Thronton Wilder

Stephanie Coontz is a teacher, historian, author and a scholar activist. She has also very indulged in the world of public debate on families, this mostly due possible because of her extensive skills to study modern families as well as historical patterns. In her book The Way We Never Were, Coontz presents a historical look at the family and how it has changed over time. Her interest in the subject comes for her need to understand how families functioned in the past and present, and what lead to notion and definition of family nowadays.

“Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Jim Rohns quote highlights the basis of Debra Oswald’s play Gary’s house, and also Miroshav Holubs poem The Door. This essay will explore the notion that change causes people to shift their thinking and actions after significant catalysts. Gary’s House illustrates many of the issues and predicaments confronted by the characters and how their alteration in behaviour can have a beneficial outcome for them or others around them. The concept of "The Door" is based on the idea of taking risks and embracing change. The poet uses persuasive techniques to encourage and provoke the audience to take action.

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a

In the Fences, by August Wilson shows that life of African Americans in the U.S. in the 1950s with the story of Troy and his family. Wilson uses the symbol of the fence to show the desires of each character like Rose’s desire is to keep her family together, Troy’s desire is to keep death out and to be not bound forever, and Bono’s desire is to follow Troy, his best friend, as an example of the right way to live and to be with Rose and Troy who are basically his family. Rose and the other seen characters represent people and show gender roles of the time, like Rose is a housewife, Troy is the provider. Also Cory is the new generation of emotion over responsibility, Gabriel represents the war heros that were permanently disabled from war

Many Americans live with the idea that the days of racism are far behind us; however, the film The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki 's, and the book The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, state otherwise. Although the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for a fourth of the world’s prisoners. More than the majority of these prisoners are of color. (Jarecki 2012; Alexander 2012, 189) Therefore, the statistics contradict the U.S.’s long-held ideal of freedom and equality. This large prisoner population has been a consequence of the War on Drugs—a war that has not only locked up millions of African Americans but also given them a permanent second-class status. Both the video and the book

My mother, Lisa Dawn Hicks Kern, was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Sunday, June 15, 1969. Her father, James Kenneth Hicks, was 28 at the time of my mother’s birth; he was employed at Red River Army Depot as an electrical engineer. Her mother, Sharon Lee Clark Hicks, was 25 when my mother was born, at the time she was the home maker. My mother had an older sister who was a four year old toddler at the time of my mother’s birth. Kimberly Ann Hicks was born at Wadley Regional Medical Center, Texarkana, TX, on Monday, August 30, 1965.

America’s answer for dealing with crime prevention is locking up adult offenders in correctional facilities with little rehabilitation for reentry into society. American response for crime prevention for juvenile’s offenders is the same strategy used against adult offenders taken juvenile offenders miles away from their environment and placed in adult like prisons.

The story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin centers on the conflicting relationship between two brothers that is explored throughout various stages of their lives. Through the structured, melodic style used by Baldwin there are reoccurring themes of suffering, family, and home that are used to further convey the idea of two brothers who love each other, but don’t understand each other. Ultimately, the relationship between the two brothers is greatly strained due them being polar opposites, their lack of effective communication, and failure to truly hear one another rather than seeing. The characters do not have much in common beyond the blood that they share, thus making it difficult for a bond to form until the walls of judgement are torn

Another Country is a fiction book written by James Baldwin in 1962. James Baldwin was an essayist, playwright, and novelist with many popular writings. He is an iconic African American for his writings during the Civil Rights era in the United States focusing on racial and social issues. In Another Country, Baldwin’s characters go through interracial, homosexual, bisexual, and violent relationships. The main character, Rufus Scott, is an African American jazz drummer that commits suicide after the pressures of exploring his sexuality and race. He realizes he feels racial and masculine power when he has sexual encounters with white people due to the Civil Right era where as a black man he has no power. His friends and sister throughout the book feel guilty and try to unveil the reasons Rufus committed suicide, causing them themselves to explore their sexuality and identifying themselves within their race.

Throughout Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, resistance to change is a popular, repeated theme; this theme is easily seen when George and Emily walk home from school together and stop at the drugstore for ice cream sodas. Emily’s caution as to not upset George when confronting him about changing and Mr. Morgan’s negative comments about the changes going on in town and about the passage of time making matters worse, show the seriousness that townspeople of Grover’s Corners take any amount of change.

The play "Our Town" starts out with a family that has children getting ready for school. The play then jumps six years ahead where two of the children are now getting married. The small town all attends the wedding and the Stage Manager goes through discussing what the people say about their wedding. After this the play jumps forward another nine years where the bride is now having her second child and dies during child birth. After this happens it tells about people attending her funeral as she watches in the afterlife along with other people form the town in their afterlife. The Stage Manager goes through explaining how all the people died and then the bride, Emily, decides she wants to go back for just one day. She wasn't allowed to pick a normal day so she just picked her 12th birthday. During her birthday, she had a normal morning with her parents and brother, but as the day goes on she realizes that the time is going by too fast. She decides to go back to the afterlife because it was too hard to sit there and know it was her last day with them. She began to realize that even the boring, daily life is important and should be

In “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid criticizes tourists for being heartless and ignorant to the problems that the people of Antigua had and the sacrifices that had to be made to make Antigua a tremendous tourist/vacation spot. While Kincaid makes a strong argument, her argument suggests that she doesn't realize what tourism is for the tourists. In other words, tourism is an escape for those who are going on vacation and the tourists are well within their rights to be “ignorant”, especially because no one is telling them what is wrong with Antigua.

James baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His essays were mostly of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, mostly in mid-20th-century America. Some of Baldwin's essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976). An unfinished manuscript, Remember This House, was expanded upon and adapted for cinema as the Academy Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro. Writer and playwright James Baldwin was born August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York. One of the 20th century's greatest writers, Baldwin broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many works. He was especially well known for his essays on the black experience in America.

One lesson a modern day reader can take from Our Town is to appreciate life as it passes by. In the beginning, Our Town may seem like a simple, boring play until you realize what it is building to in Act III. Throughout Acts I and II, we see the characters going about their daily lives, young and with much vitality. Then, in Act III, nine years have passed and many of the characters who had just seemed so full of life are dead. Emily Webb has just passed and wishes to go back and relive her life. She chooses to go back to her 12th birthday, thinking it wouldn’t be a painful day. However, as the day begins, Emily realizes that people never truly see one another and that life goes too fast. She tries to tell her family all the things she

The Civil Rights Movement that began in the late 1950's was a struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to primarily African American citizens of the United States. In the end, African-Americans won basic rights long denied to them, as well as inspired other discriminated groups to fight for their own rights, which had a deep effect on American society. Many blacks took part in this movement, whether it was through protesting or holding demonstrations. However, some blacks used writing as a means of contributing. James Baldwin published Stranger in the Village as a means of expressing his views of African-American racism. As a result, their efforts helped set the foundation for equal rights among blacks for generations