Previous
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?

Emily asks this question of the Stage Manager at the end of Act III, after she has revisited her twelfth birthday. The Stage Manager answers that humans indeed do not realize life, except for perhaps the “saints and poets, maybe.” Perhaps the play’s best-known passage, these words emphasize the value of everyday events. Throughout the play, the characters place importance on moments of ceremony and consequence, such as George and Emily’s wedding and Emily’s funeral. But the characters do not seem to value or make an emotional connection to the daily activities of their rather ordinary lives.

Instead of attempting to “realize life” at every moment, the inhabitants of Grover’s Corners—and people the world over, by implication—often lack any sense of wonder at what passes before their eyes every day. When Emily relives her twelfth birthday, she futilely tries to get her mother really to look at her and not take her presence for granted. This experience causes Emily to realize that during her own life, she herself did not pay enough attention to detail and did not appreciate her family and her town the way she does now that she is dead. Emily’s remark directly precedes her return to the cemetery, and it signals her resignation to the realm of the dead souls. Emily is pained by her recognition that human beings waste great opportunities at every moment, and her realization dampens her desire to return to the world of the living.

Previous section Important Quotes Explained Page 4

Popular pages: Our Town

Take a Study Break