Page 86

I often wonder why people like to be buried in Woodlawn and Brooklyn when they might pass the same time up here in New Hampshire.

• Stage Manager to audience
• the point the stage manager is trying to make is that it doesnt matter where you are burried. if your dead, your dead. There is not much of a difference. He also makes a point that New Hampshire is beautiful and why would you want to be burried in a place that is not as nice.

Page 87

They want to make sure they're Daughters of the American Revolution and of the Mayflower... Well, I guess that don't do any harm, either. Wherever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.

• Stage Manager to audience
• this quote is said just to show us that we want to be important.
• we think that if we have special ancestory we might be better than someone else.
• Wilder is trying to show to us that we make a big deal over dead people

page 87

Now there are some things we all know, but we don't take'm out and look at'm very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars...everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be suprised how people are always losing hold of it. Ther's some thing way down deep that's eternal about every human being.

• stage manager to audience
• quote talks about how you won't have everything forever.
• you won't have your house or car when you die
• we often forget that
• the only eternal thing is how people remember us
• they won't remeber us for our cars, or clothes, or house, or material items
• Wilder calls to our attention that we do often lose sight of whats important in life

Page 88

You know as well as I do that the dead don't stay interested in us living people for very long. Gradually, gradually, they lose hold of the earth... and the ambitions they had... and the pleasures they had.. and the things they suffered... and the people they loved.

• Stage manager to audience
• talkes about how nothing lasts forever.
• when you die, it doesnt matter what you physically had in life, because you don't have it anymore

page 93

I'd forgotten all about that. my, wasn't life awful- and wonderful.

• Mrs. Soames to Mrs. Gibbs and Simon
  Stimson
• Mrs. Soames saying that sometimes life will be hard and sometimes wonderful
• you don't appreciate life until you don't have it anymore.
• paradox

Page 96

it won't be the same to George without me, but it's a lovely farm. Live people don't understand, do they?

• Emily to Mrs. Gibbs
• Emily is realizing that we just revolve around our stuff.
• realizes that she took life for granted only wanting more stuff

Page 107

But, just for a moment now wer're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's look at one another

• Emily to Mrs. Webb (sort of)
• Emily is dead
• she is trying to talk to her mother from one of her memories
• Wilder is trying to make a point that in life we get caught up in our own life
• we don't take enough time to appreciate the ones we love

Page 109

Yes, now you know. now you know! that's what it was to be alive . To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on those feelings of those... of those about you. to spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self- centered passsion, or another. Now you know- that's the happy existance you wanted to go back to. Ignorace and blindness.

• Simon Stimson to Emily
• Simon is talking to Emily after she comes back from visiting the past with her memory
• Emily is regretting visiting that memory
• she knows now that she can't go back in time
• she took her family for granted and focused on herself

Page 108

Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners... Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths... and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

• Emily to herself
• she is about to leave the memory
• Emily is thinking about all the normal and ordinary things that happen in life
• she misses everyday things like waking up and going to sleep
• she misses living
• Wilder is trying to show us that we should be thankful just to live everyday. if we live for important days, then we can't enjoy little things. which somethimes are just as wonderful