ShmoopTube

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Our Town, a la Shmoop. These days, most of us take our first steps

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here . . . . . . or here.

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The 1% making "the big bucks" might be lucky enough to have their mail delivered here . . .

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. . . while people making no bucks, unfortunately, end up sleeping here.

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But not too long ago, most Americans used to hang out here.

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They lived in places where everybody knew everybody else; where people were all up in

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everyone's business and life moved a whoooole lot slower.

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In Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize winning play, Our Town, the author lets us in on what

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life was like in 1913 in small town USA. We can agree that a bunch of things have changed

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in the last hundred years, but here's the million-dollar question: Are we really all

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that different from the folks Mr. Wilder wrote about?

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Quick Review: Grover's Corners isn't what you would call

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an exciting place to live. It's one of those places where you're born, get married, grow

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old and finally, well, you know . . . The Webbs and the Gibbs are neighbors, and

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their kids, Emily and George, kind of like each other.

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When they finally fall in love - like we all knew they would - they do what they're supposed

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to do. They get married. . .

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And just when you think everyone is going to end up "Happily Ever After'. . .

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. . . Emily drops dead! Okay. Review's over. Let's get back to our

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original question. Are we really all that different from the citizens of Our Town?

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Well, some would say that even though our stuff looks different . . .

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. . . people are exactly the same. Others might argue that all that cool stuff

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has done more than make our lives easier -- it's changed human beings forever.

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But maybe the answer is somewhere in between. Families may look a lot different than the

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Webbs and the Gibbs. . . . . . and technology and the civil rights

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movement have shaken up more than just a few things.

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But the values America was built on . . . . . . haven't exactly disappeared.

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We like to put a ring on it . . . . . . and love to root for the underdog.

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We work hard . . . . . . and share what we have with our neighbors.

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The real world is a lot more complicated these days...

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. . . sometimes we wonder if our great-grandparents didn't have the right idea all along.

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Maybe the simple life was where it's at. So, are we different from Emily and George?

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Shmoop Amongst Yourselves

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